UC-NRLF 


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Building 

Your 

GIRL 

KENNETH  H.  WAYNE 


GIFT  or  ^ 


^ 


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in  2007  with  funding  from 

IVIicrosoft  Corporation 


http://www.archive.org/details/buildingyourgirlOOwaynrich 


BUILDING  YOUR  GIRL 


By  the  Same  Author 

BUILDING  YOUR  BOY 

16mo      ....     Netf  50  cents 


A.  C.  McCLURG  &  CO., 

Publishers 
CHICAGO 


Building  Your  Girl 


BY 

KENNETH    H.  WAYNE 

AUTHOR    OF 

Building  Your  Boy^^ 


5 ;-'    • : 


CHICAGO 

A.  C.   McCLURG    &    CO. 

1911 


Copyright  1911  ^  vjA 

A.  C.  McCLURG  &  CO. 


Published  September,  1911 


cy'tS 


■  C) 


The  Caslon  Press 
Chicaeo 


CONTENTS 

PAOK 

I    The  New  Position  of  Femi- 
ninity   9 

II    The  Girl  in  the  Home    .     .     19 

III  The  Physical   Basis  m   Girl- 

Building    25 

IV  A  Girl  and  Her  Readmg     .     87 

V    Your   Girl  and   Her  Ethical 

Training 55 

VI    Your  Girl  and  the  Elements 

of  True  Womanhood .     .     69 

VII    Your  Girl  in  Relation  to  Do- 
mestic Science  and  Charm     88 

VIII    Your  Girl  and  Her  Relation 

to  Marriage 103 

IX    Your  Girl  and  a  College  Career  123 

X    Your  Girl  on  the  Threshold 

of  Real  Life      •     •     •     .134 


Building  Your  Girl 


I 

THE    NEW   POSITION    OF 
FEMININITY 

BECAUSE  the  Girl  in  her  mid- 
dle teens,  and  a  little  beyond,  is 
the  mother  of  the  woman;  in- 
deed, under  our  system  of  rapid 
twentieth-century  development,  when 
everything  is  precocious  and  well-nigh 
marvellous,  she  is  almost  the  woman 
herself;  and,  because  the  swing  of  the 
pendulum  of  modernity  has  carried 
woman,  unwontedly,  to  a  more  exalted 
position  and  to  a  larger  share  and  in- 
fluence in  the  affairs  and  activities  of 
life  than  she  has  hitherto  enjoyed,  that 
part  of  the  life-work  of  fathers  and 
mothers  pertaining  directly  to  the  build- 
ing of  the  Girl  presents  new  and  in- 
teresting, as  well  as  vitally  important, 
phases,  well  worth  candid  attention  and 


lp;>3X;rL;I)INe     YOUR     GIRL 

study.  To  invite  this  attention  and 
induce  this  study,  mayhap  to  offer  some 
suggestions  which  shall  prove  helpful, 
is  the  object  of  this  booklet. 

Primarily,  there  is  the  same  beautiful 
ordination  of  fatherhood  and  mother- 
hood, in  this  Girl-building.  And  it  will 
go  without  saying  that  nothing  in 
human  life  and  living  can  be  more 
appealingly  beautiful  than  this  ordina- 
tion of  parenthood,  where  it  is  true  and 
loyal  to  its  elemental  thought  and  de- 
sign, and  so  suffused  with  love,  and  care, 
and  pride,  and  interest,  that  its  respon- 
sibilities, while  actualized,  are  gladly 
accepted;  where  the  fathers  and  mothers 
never  become  so  conscious  of  its  cares 
and  obligations  as  to  think  of  them  as 
burdensome  and  to  wish  that  they  might 
end,  but  instead,  have  a  positive  dread 
of  the  quickly  oncoming  time  when  their 
children  have  grown  and  are  gone,  and 
they,  the  parents,  sit  in  their  empty 
homes;  no  boys  and  girls  to  put  them 
in  disorder,  no  more  the  kiss  of  baby 
lips,  the  patter  of  little  feet,  and  the 


BUILDING    YOUR     GIRL      11 

sight  of  the  dear  heads  safe  on  their 
pillows. 

Human  life  presents  no  feature  more 
captivating  and  more  desirable  to  the 
average  man  and  woman  than  this,  nor 
any  so  fraught  with  the  richer,  purer 
joys  coveted  by  them,  nor  yet  any  whose 
retrospection  in  after  years,  promises  so 
much  of  unmingled  joy  and  satisfac- 
tion. 

In  such  parenthood  as  this,  manhood 
and  womanhood  rise  to  the  highest  pos- 
sible plane  of  life  and  living.  It  touches 
the  ideal  that  had  its  birth  and  fashion- 
ing in  the  mind  and  heart  of  Infinite 
Wisdom.  The  ideal  is  that  beauty 
which  is  above  and  beyond  the  beauty  of 
the  artist ;  the  truth  which  is  above  and 
beyond  the  truth  of  the  philosopher; 
that  sacredness  which  is  above  and  be- 
yond the  sanctity  of  the  saint;  that  love 
which  transcends  all  other  love.  In  art, 
the  loss  of  the  ideal  would  be  its  degra- 
dation to  mere  realism.  In  human  life, 
the  loss  of  the  ideal  of  parenthood  and 
home  would  be  degradation  and  death 


12     BUILDING     YOUR     GIRL 

to  the  individual  and  the  nation.  The 
self -constituted  and  so-called  reformers, 
who  speak  with  contempt  of  this  parent- 
hood, as  being  unworthy,  and  beneath 
the  dignity  of  men  and  women  of  our 
day,  are  the  enemies  of  the  race,  and 
the  heralds  of  moral  vagabondage. 
Only  reverence  for  the  ideal  of  parent- 
hood and  the  home  will  save  civilization 
from  decay  and  death.  The  home  made 
sacred  by  the  institution  of  marriage, 
where  children  are  nurtured  in  an  at- 
mosphere of  love  and  good  comradeship, 
and  brought  to  manhood  and  woman- 
hood, is  the  fountain  from  which  every- 
thing else  of  value  springs. 

It  is  a  matter  for  congratulatory 
thought  with  all  straight-thinking  peo- 
ple, particularly  with  fathers  and 
mothers  busy  with  the  enviable  privilege 
of  Girl-building,  that  the  new  order  for 
femininity  revises,  if  indeed  it  does  not 
wholly  repeal,  the  long-accepted  defini- 
tion of  life,  and  the  economy  of  the 
practices  and  principles  applied  in 
training  for  it,  as  these    concern  the 


BUILDING     YOUR     GIRL      13 

building  of  the  Girl.  The  education  and 
training  are  so  radically  different,  that 
there  is  scarcely  any  correspondence  or 
semblance  between  the  old  and  the  new 
order.  Our  young  women  are  being 
equipped  with  ability  to  look  upon  life 
in  its  largeness;  to  recognize  beauty  in 
all  service;  all  life  as  a  warfare  for  the 
higher  good;  the  world  as  a  working- 
place  in  the  interest  of  what  is  fin- 
est and  best  —  best  in  a  religion  that 
has  service  to  humanity  as  its  creed  — 
best  in  ethics,  best  in  all  intellectual 
belongings. 

No  sane  man  who  takes  account  of 
the  pilgrimage  of  events  at  their  depths, 
and  with  whom  the  spasmodic  and 
superficial  weigh  nothing,  has  any  idea 
that  there  will  be  ever  a  return  to  what 
occurred  in  old  Egypt,  as  the  one  devia- 
tion in  the  world's  history,  from  the 
prejudice  in  favor  of  sons  at  the  expense 
of  the  daughters,  when  the  pendulum 
swung  to  the  opposite  extreme,  and 
femininity  was  not  only  a  badge  of 
equality  with  the  other  sex,  but  a  recog- 


14      BUILDING     YOUR     GIRL 

nized  mark  of  superiority  over  it.  Even 
the  title  to  the  throne  was  transmitted 
through  the  female  line.  All  property 
was  bequeathed  in  like  manner.  At 
marriage,  the  husband  assumed  the 
name  of  the  wife,  and  the  sons  of  the 
family  were  named  for  the  mother.  All 
political  and  commercial  interests  were 
controlled  and  directed  by  the  women. 
There  was  no  such  thing  as  a  philosophy 
of  physical  strength  and  authority. 
The  men  did  the  work  and  the  fighting, 
but  the  women  were  supreme  in  the 
administration  of  everything.  As  they 
looked  at  it,  those  were  halcyon  days 
for  the  women  of  the  old  land,  but  the 
fact  that  it  did  not  long  endure  may  be 
said  to  prove  that  it  was  not  best,  even 
for  them.  Nor  are  we  to  conclude  that 
a  similar  system ;  one  that  differentiates 
in  favor  of  the  sterner  sex,  is  either  right 
or  just. 

While  it  is  true  that,  in  the  nature  of 
things,  the  relations  of  the  two  sexes 
cannot  be  adjusted  on  a  basis  of  perfect 
equality,  because  there  are  differences 


BUILDING     YOUR     GIRL      15 

of  capacity  and  adaptability  that  can- 
not be  reconciled  by  legislation  or  any 
other  artificial  process,  the  fact  remains, 
that  men  and  women  have  certain  rights 
in  common,  which  are  to  be  respected 
without  any  reference  whatever  to  other 
considerations.  This  involves  certain 
general  principles  of  honor  and  equity 
which  cannot  properly  be  antagonized. 

Women  are,  no  doubt,  disqualified 
for  many  pursuits ;  but  there  is  no  war- 
rant in  that  fact  for  any  contention  that 
they  are  an  inferior  class  of  beings,  or 
that  preference  should  be  given  to  men, 
in  any  degree  that  amounts  to  a  con- 
demnation of  womanhood,  either  as  a 
fault  or  an  inferiority.  The  fact  that 
the  physical  strength  of  a  woman  may 
be  less  than  that  of  a  man,  or  that  her 
capacity  for  motion  may  be  less  than 
and  inferior  to  that  of  a  man,  is  no 
warrant  for  her  exclusion  from  the  field 
of  practical  work,  even  the  scientific 
activities  of  the  world. 

And  so  the  new  order,  or  regime,  or 
system    (whatever  we  may  term  it), 


16      BUILDING     YOUR     GIRL 

recognizing  the  manifest  and  inherent 
rights  and  equities  of  woman,  insists 
that  her  training  and  development — or, 
in  other  phrasing,  her  building — be- 
ginning in  her  early  girlhood,  shall  be 
largely,  almost  wholly,  on  the  ethical 
and  intellectual  side;  maintaining,  and 
rightly,  too,  that  the  highest  benefits 
have  been  from  the  ethical;  that  the 
ethical  is  the  true  basis  of  permanent 
and  beneficent  truth. 

The  supreme  blunder  of  the  so-called 
religious  fathers,  was  their  holding  to 
the  creed  and  belief  that  all  good  came 
to  men  through  religion  and  the  church; 
that  nothing  was  good  that  did  not  come 
over  that  thoroughfare.  Churchmen 
there  are,  who  still  cling  to  the  skirts 
of  that  notion.  And  that,  too,  in  the 
face  of  the  truth,  that  the  highest  and 
best  teachings  and  influences  for  the 
good  of  humanity,  came  from  the  purely 
ethical  nature  of  the  Galilee  Man  in 
brown  serge.  The  ethical  was  by  far 
the  largest  and  most  active  part  of  his 
nature  and  personality.  His  work  was 
largely  in  wakening  men  to  the  con* 


BUILDING     YOUR     GIRL     17 

sciousness  of  an  ethical  ideal,  setting 
before  them  true  and  lofty  standards. 
He  did  not,  perhaps,  regard  culture 
and  religion  as  two  opposite  powers, 
but  in  his  teaching  the  ethical  had  the 
preference. 

It  is  an  omen  presaging  untellable 
good,  that  the  training  and  education  of 
our  young  women  is,  from  now  on,  to 
be  in  the  main  of  an  ethical  character; 
the  cultivation,  not  merely  of  certain 
technical  and  professional  faculties,  but, 
over  and  above  these,  of  the  whole  per- 
sonality, called  woman.  She  is  to  be 
educated  and  trained  to  take  her  place 
side  by  side  with  the  man;  she  not  to  be 
independent  of  him,  nor*  he  to  be  inde- 
pendent of  her;  they  to  be  co-equal  and 
co-important.  In  the  home  and  social 
life,  each  is  the  equal  and  complement 
of  the  other,  for  each  has  what  the  other 
lacks,  and  lacks  what  the  other  has. 
Differently  constituted  and  organized 
as  they  are,  yet  in  intellect  and  heart  and 
sensibilities  the  two  make  up  sjrmmet- 
rical  humanity. 

If  the  man,  giving  much  or  little  of 


18      BUILDING     YOUR     GIRL 

himself  to  the  affairs  and  activities  of 
the  world,  finds  his  mind  and  heart 
broadened  and  deepened  and  strength- 
ened by  the  attrition,  the  woman  has  the 
right  to  the  education  and  training 
which  fit  her  for  a  kindred  service  and 
enjoyment;  not  for  a  "career,"  in  the 
conventional  sense,  but  for  the  greatest 
possible  capability  for  the  rational  use 
and  enjoyment  of  her  powers,  in  con- 
tributing to  the  bulk  of  the  world's 
work,  to  its  upbuilding  and  enrichment. 
There  is  a  distinct  gain  in  this  newer 
outlook;  a  clear  prophecy  of  good.  It 
is  rational,  and  it  is  justified  by  the 
exigencies  of  modern  life. 

With  these  and  kindred  thoughts  and 
views  in  illustration  of  the  basic  and 
fundamental  principles  in  the  new  order 
for  femininity,  we  come,  pleasantly,  to 
the  more  practical  discussion  of  their 
adaptability  and  desirability  in  real  life 
— in  the  building  of  the  Girl. 


II 

THE  GIRL  IN  THE  HOME 

AMONG  the  most  picturesque  and 
JLJL  attractive  pen-drawings  in  the 
Gospels,  is  that  one  made  by  the  gifted 
and  versatile  Doctor  Luke,  descriptive 
of  the  visit  of  the  Master  to  the  home  of 
the  Mayor  of  Capharnahum.  As  a 
mere  picture  it  is  exquisite;  but  he 
makes  the  scene  one  of  such  extraordi- 
narily vivid  coloring,  and  so  intensely 
dramatic,  blending  the  human  and 
divine  by  its  grouping  and  action,  that 
it  is  very  impressive  and  suggestive. 

As  we  take  the  Master's  being  a 
helpful,  participating  guest,  at  the  Cana 
wedding  feast,  as  his  tribute  to,  and 
indorsement  of,  the  institution  of  mar- 
riage, and  the  delightful  social  features 
of  these  occasions,  we  have  equal  war- 
rant in  taking  this  visit  to  the  home  of 
the  Mayor  of  Capharnahum,  and  what 
he  did  there,  as  a  visible  and  purposed 
illustration  of  his  sanction  of  iand  in- 

19 


20     BUILDING    YOUR     GIRL 

terest  in  the  institution  of  the  home,  as 
well  as  the  worth,  and  beauty,  and  com- 
fort and  joy,  of  the  Girl  in  it. 

The  little  daughter  of  the  Mayor  was 
sick  unto  death,  and  with  swimming 
eyes  and  piteously  quavering  lips,  at 
the  threatening  bereavement  and  loss 
and  sorrow,  they  had  besought  the 
Master  to  come  and  save  her.  He  con- 
sented, but  ere  he  had  reached  the  home, 
the  cruel  stroke  of  an  alien  hand  had 
fallen,  and  the  fair  young  face  of  the 
little  girl  had  paled  under  the  dusky 
shadow  of  the  death-angel's  wing.  She 
had  died.  His  great  heart,  throbbing 
with  sympathy  for  the  father  and 
mother  in  their  bereavement  and  sorrow, 
and  realizing  what  a  glad  joy  the- pres- 
ence of  this  little  girl  in  the  home  had 
been  to  them,  the  Master  comes  to  the 
couch  on  which  lies  the  lifeless  form,  to 
manifest  his  sympathy  by  the  restora- 
tion of  that  joy.  Taking  the  lifeless 
hand  of  the  dead  girl  in  his  own  hand  of 
helpfulness  and  power,  and  using  the 
old-while  Jewish  mother  call,  he  said. 


BUILDING     YOUR     GIRL     21 

"  Chad,  awake."  Instantly  she  opened 
her  eyes  and  stood  up.  With  another 
touch  of  the  human  added  to  the  scene, 
"  Give  her  something  to  eat,"  he  leaves 
them. 

A  study  of  Doctor  Luke's  pictured 
scene  ought  to  be  inspirational,  giving 
us,  as  it  does,  a  clear  look  into  the  heart 
and  mind  of  the  Great  Teacher,  his 
thought  and  interest  in  relation,  not 
only  to  the  ordination  of  parenthood, 
but  to  the  worth  and  beauty  and  joy  of 
children  in  the  home. 

Let  us  suppose  that  you  have  in  your 
home  a  Girl.  As  to  age,  she  is  near  her 
middle  teens.  She  is  your  Girl.  She 
is  bright  of  mind,  fairly  clever,  has  an 
attractive  prettiness  of  face  and  figure ; 
in  both,  the  promise  of  more  than  the 
average  share  of  beauty  at  womanhood. 
She  is  in  health.  She  is  not  demure,  nor 
is  she  hoydenish.  She  is  hearty  in  her 
enjoyment  of  the  pleasures,  amuse- 
ments, and  merriments  of  her  age.  She 
has  many  lovable  qualities  of  disposition 
and  temperament.     She  is   fiilial   and 


2«      BUILDING     YOUR     GIRL 

affectionate;  unselfish  and  helpful; 
cheerful  in  her  tasks  and  studies.  She 
is  the  average  Girl  of  the  average 
American  home. 

She  is  your  Girl,  and  she  is  in  your 
home  for  your  building  into  young 
womanhood.  What  this  Girl  becomes, 
physically,  mentally,  and  morally, 
through  education  and  training,  rests 
largely  with  you.  What  you  do  for  and 
with  this  Girl,  consciously  and  uncon- 
sciously, will  crystallize  into  character, 
habit,  conduct.  Parenthood  fixes  the 
responsibility.  The  home  is  the  build- 
ing place.  You  cannot  evade  the 
obligation  if  you  would.  It  is  taken  for 
granted  that  you  would  not  if  you 
could;  that  you  accept  it  gratefully,  as 
a  privilege,  something  of  the  impersonal 
that  rises  to  heights  not  touched  by 
simple  duty.  Duty  is  more  or  less 
coercive.  Privilege,  like  devotion,  is 
impelling,  with  no  hint  of  compulsion. 

In  the  home,  a  Girl,  because  she  is  a 
girl,  has  a  larger  share  of  its  intimacies, 
associations,  and  confidences,  than  a  boy. 


BUILDING     YOUR     GIRL      23 

her  brother.  She  has  need  of,  and  is 
accorded,  more  of  its  sheltering  condi- 
tion. By  nature,  she  is  more  sensitive 
and  deUcate.  She  is  the  companion 
and  helpmeet  of  the  mother.  A  boy  is 
peculiarly  adapted  to  movement  and 
action,  out  of  doors.  He  is  excelled  by 
the  Girl  in  nearly  all  the  higher  quali- 
ties. The  Girl  is  more  aesthetic  than 
the  boy.  Of  the  two,  he  is  the  more 
practical.  Give  him  a  bit  of  ground, 
and  he  will  plant  corn  or  melons.  The 
Girl  will  set  out  flowering  plants  es- 
teemed for  their  beauty  or  perfume. 

Although  the  Girl  spends  more  of 
her  time  in  the  home  with  the  mother 
than  with  the  father,  evidence  seems  to 
establish  it  as  a  fact,  that  the  character 
of  the  development  of  the  Girl  is  more 
directly  and  more  fully  due  to  the  teach- 
ing and  influence  of  the  father,  than 
to  that  of  the  mother.  Through  the 
mother  come  the  growth  and  develop- 
ment of  all  those  graces  and  amenities 
which  are  native  to  femininity,  and 
which  pertain  to  home  and  social  life, 


24      BUILDING     YOUR     GIRL 

personal  adornment,  etiquette,  and  the 
like;  but  in  the  larger  field  of  her 
studies,  her  school  and  college  work — 
in  the  general  sense,  the  cultivation  and 
development  of  her  powers — the  Girl, 
without  any  invidious  distinction  be- 
tween her  father  and  mother,  or  any 
lack  of  affection  for  the  latter,  someway 
turns  to  him  for  help  and  information 
and  advice  in  the  solution  of  the  prob- 
lems and  difficulties  which  confront  her. 
This  appeal  results  from  her  deference 
to  his  knowledge,  his  intellectual 
strength,  and  his  experience  in  life. 
The  average  American  Girl  finds  great 
delight  in  being  the  chummy  companion 
of  her  father.  Where  the  delight  is 
mutual,  there  is  the  promise  of  great 
helpfulness  and  good  in  this  Girl- 
building. 


Ill 

THE  PHYSICAL  BASIS  IN 
GIRL-BUILDING 

NOT  very  long  ago,  we  came  to  the 
parting  of  the  ways  in  this  matter 
of  the  physical  beauty  of  a  Girl. 
Speaking  of  the  human  physique,  we 
had  in  our  thoughts  an  Apollo  of  a  man 
garbed  in  strength  and  grace;  a  sym- 
metrical body,  rich  in  blood,  strong  in 
muscle,  lithesome;  health  streaming 
through  every  vein  and  artery.  He 
was  a  king  among  men.  Men  admired 
him;  women  loved  him;  children  con- 
fided in  him.  Physical  perfection  was 
regarded  as  the  highest  type  of  the 
divine.  Physical  soundness  was  con- 
sidered, not  only  the  prime  condition, 
but  the  essential  of  every  other  essential. 
It  was  believed  that  an  ideal  humanity 
was  unthinkable  until  the  units  making 
up  humanity,  were  ideal.  One  of  these 
units  was  a  perfect,  or  at  least  a  splendid 
physical  condition.  With  the  exception 
of  the  old   Greeks,   this  idea  of  the 

25 


26     BUILDING     YOUR    GIRL 

physical  perfection  differentiated  be- 
tween the  male  and  the  female.  When 
the  Greek  artists  set  about  to  produce 
a  masterpiece,  they  selected  for  the  sub- 
ject  a  young  girl  just  at  the  threshold 
of  womanhood,  giving  her  the  thirty 
points  which  they  held  as  necessary  to 
the  physical  perfection  of  woman.  In 
the  Greek  thought  there  was  a  spiritual 
beauty  blending  with  the  physical.  The 
Greek  sought  perfect  form,  not  as  an 
end  in  itself,  but  as  a  true  expression  of 
spiritual  law  and  reality. 

In  those  earlier  years  the  phrases 
"  weaker  sex  "  and  "  gentler  sex  "  were 
otherwise  defined  than  they  are  to-day. 
Men  loved  the  weaknesses  of  women 
rather  than  their  strength.  It  was  the 
myriad-minded  Coleridge  who  said, 
"  Every  man  would  desire  rather  to  have 
an  Ophelia  for  a  wife  than  a  Portia; 
therefore  it  is  vain  to  seek  to  banish 
feminine  weaknesses,  for  by  so  doing 
we  are  depriving  the  spider  of  its 
thread."  But  those  days,  and  whatever 
of  theories  and  practices  in  relation  to 


BUILDING     YOUR    GIRL     27 

the  education  and  the  training  of  the 
Girl  they  carried,  have  passed  among 
the  things  that  were,  and  may  be  dis- 
missed from  any  consideration  here. 
We  are  facing  new  problems,  and  deal- 
ing with  new  solutions. 

Among  the  first  things  in  the  building 
of  a  Girl  is  the  duty  of  giving  her,  so 
far  as  is  possible,  the  foundation  of 
physical  perfection.  Far  more  than 
one-half  of  the  weaknesses  of  adult 
women — the  whole  evil  brood  of  neuro- 
logical ailments,  hysteria,  morbidness, 
and  the  like  —  are  the  penalties  imposed 
by  nature  for  carelessness,  indifference, 
even  criminal  negligence,  with  which 
the  claims  of  health  and  a  sound 
physical  condition  were  treated  in  their 
girlhood  years. 

It  is  your  wish  and  desire,  that  your 
Girl  shall  grow  up  and  develop  into  a 
sweet,  pure,  wholesome,  refined,  and 
cultured  young  woman — one  whose 
very  presence  radiates  an  atmosphere 
of  useful,  helpful,  and  sympathetic 
strength.    If  so,  then  you  must  make 


28      BUILDING     YOUR     GIRL 

her  physical  condition  and  training  in 
her  earlier  years  your  special  and  con- 
tinuous study  and  care.  Haphazard 
and  spasmodic  effort  will  not  avail. 
The  enemies  to  health  and  a  sound 
physical  condition  are  always  alert, 
lying  await ;  the  thousand  and  one  little 
weavers  of  shrouds. 

Health  is  the  fulfilment  of  the  law;  it 
is  the  law.  Sickness  is  the  great  law- 
wrecker.  Nature,  God's  executive 
officer,  prefers  to  develop  good  souls 
in  good  bodies.  The  Man  of  Nazareth 
gave  us  that  great  truth,  when  he  went 
about  touching  men  into  the  kingdom  of 
perfect  health. 

In  her  administration  of  her  king- 
dom. Nature  knows  no  higher  or  lower 
law  than  order.  Sickness,  and  the 
scores  of  ailments  with  which  men  and 
women  are  afflicted,  come  of  disorder. 
In  furtherance  of  her  plan  and  purpose 
of  order  (and  therefore  of  health) 
Nature  made  ample  provision  for  three 
of  the  greatest  elements  as  preventives 
and  curatives  —  water,  air,  and  light. 


BUILDING     YOUR     GIRL     29 

In  the  proper  and  intelligent  use  of 
these  three,  and  adding  a  reasonable 
amount  of  work  and  play,  with  tem- 
perance of  body  and  mind,  we  shall 
have  health  and,  barring  accidents,  long 
life.  Purposing  for  your  Girl,  the 
best  physical  proportions,  and  the  best 
health,  these  are  some  of  the  thoughts 
and  truths  which  you  can  and  will  trans- 
mute into  a  practical  system  of  action 
in  her  behalf.  There  is  nothing  fictional 
about  it,  or  difficult  in  it. 

Very  true,  there  must  be  a  systematic 
and  continuous  use  of  these  health- 
giving  elements.  However  good  and 
wholesome  an  occasional  return  to  these 
helps  to  health  may  be,  it  will  not  make 
a  thoroughly  healthy  Girl.  At  the  out- 
set there  may  be  occasion  for  some  in- 
sistence, but  the  sharp  edge  of  even  that 
can  be  taken  off  by  pleasantries  in 
reasoning  and  explanation.  In  a  little 
while  the  details  of  this  training  become 
the  daily  habit,  and  any  interruption  a 
hardship. 

Teach  your  Girl  that  it  is  her  first 


so      BUILDING     YOUR     GIRL 

duty  to  make  the  most  and  best  of  her- 
self in  the  physical  sense,  because,  in 
order  to  make  the  most  and  the  best  of 
the  little  moral  and  ethical  world  within 
herself,  she  must  have  health,  a  good 
physical  condition,  be  wholesome,  and 
vibrant  with  life  and  spirits.  Teach  her 
that  a  fine  physical  development  is  the 
greatest  gift  she  can  covet;  that  health 
is  a  complement  to  moral  and  intellec- 
tual life;  that  if  she  would  keep  some- 
thing of  natural  music  in  her,  something 
of  her  native  freshness  and  elasticity  of 
body  and  mind,  to  a  late  hour  in  life, 
she  must  be  taught  to  make  the  best 
use  of  nature's  elements  —  water,  and 
air,  and  light  —  and  take  regular  exer- 
cise, in  building  and  strengthening  her 
physical  system.  She  should  be  taught 
that  she  must  do  this  if  she  would  escape 
evils  to  which  she  is  peculiarly  suscep-' 
tible  because  of  her  delicately  adjusted 
mechanism.  Awaken  within  her  a  keen 
sense  of  her  own  responsibility  in  this 
matter  of  physical  development.  Fos- 
ter her  pride  in  it. 


BUILDING     YOUR     GIRL     SI 

You  ought  to  give  the  same  intelli- 
gent and  discriminating  supervision  to 
the  matter  of  the  physical  culture  of 
your  Girl  as  you  give  to  her  moral  and 
mental  culture.  Exercise  as  a  large 
part  of  it  is  of  value  only  as  it  is 
uniform,  systematized,  and  persevered 
in.  With  the  boy,  it  is  athletics.  With 
your  Girl  it  is  physical  culture. 

To  the  Girl,  exercise  ought  to  be 
joyous,  taken,  not  as  a  medicine,  but 
heartily  and  spontaneously,  with  all  the 
eagerness  of  natural  appetite.  When 
possible,  it  should  be  in  the  open  air. 
In  the  air  and  sunshine,  and  with  exer- 
cise adapted  to  her  feminine  nature, 
your  Girl  will  garner  physical  strength, 
energy,  and  a  vibrant,  joyous  spirit, 
faculties  that  will  help  her  in  winning 
intellectual  prizes,  make  her  a  charming 
companion,  and  leave  no  room  in  the 
kingdom  within  her  for  mawkish  senti- 
ment and  morbid  hysteria.  Her  exer- 
cise—  something  more  than  the  old- 
while  calisthenics —  should  be  so  much 
a  thing  of  regularity  as  to  time,  that 


32       BUILDING    YOUR    GIRL 

when  it  arrives,  her  nature  will  make 
an  insistent  appeal  for  it.  It  will  give 
you  a  Girl  who  no  more  fears  an  occa- 
sional wetting  by  the  raindrops  than  the 
roses;  a  Girl  to  whom  a  snowdrift  is 
fun,  and  for  whom  the  sun's  rays  are 
forge-fires  hardening  her  muscles. 

You  are  to  teach  her  that  in  a  large 
degree  the  body  is  built,  fashioned,  and 
moulded  by  thought,  by  the  mind. 
Although  in  the  strict  sense  the  mind 
is  independent  of  matter,  it  is  bound 
to  the  body  by  ties  which  can  be  sun- 
dered only  with  the  going  out  of  life. 
For  that  reason  she  must  be  taught  to 
give  the  help  of  her  own  practical 
thought  to  her  physical  culture,  to  cul- 
tivate its  obedience  and  love  in  this 
direction.  This  will  keep  her  from  re- 
sorting to  unpractical  methods  for 
recuperating  the  bodily  powers,  and 
enable  her  to  live  at  or  above  the  health 
mark. 

In  the  process  of  physical  culture 
your  Girl  ought  to  remain  always  her 
own  sweet  self.    The  aflfectations,  silly 


BUILDING    YOUR    GIRL       S3 

weaknesses,  and  so-called  pretty  in- 
validisms  and  languorous  sentimentali- 
ties of  femininity  are,  happily,  obsolete.  ) 
They  have  ceased  to  attract  attention 
or  to  win  sympathy.  The  actuating 
cause  may  not  be  altogether  exorcised, 
but  it  will  be,  finally.  The  tendency  of 
the  modern  system  swings  to  the  other 
extreme — making  a  man  of  the  Girl. 
Let  a  young  Girl  be  "  made  a  man  of," 
and  she  is  made  that  for  which  she  is 
not  intended.  It  would  mean  the  loss 
of  the  sweet  and  lovable  feminine 
graces ;  and  in  their  stead  would  come  a 
courting  of  publicity,  a  striving  after 
bold  effects,  a  nurturing  of  self-conceit, 
an  undue  self-reliance;  and  the  whole 
would  result,  logically,  in  forwardness 
of  character,  boisterousness  of  manner, 
audacity  of  mien,  and  curtness  of 
speech.  Such  a  result  is  deplorable; 
an  irreparable  loss  to  the  Girl ;  to  those 
in  her  home,  to  society,  and  to  the  world. 
As  a  Girl,  as  your  Girl  in  your  home, 
as  her  own  dear  self,  she  is  the  best  and 
most  precious  gift  you  could  have  or 


34     BUILDING     YOUR     GIRL 

desire ;  and  you  can  have  no  higher  pur- 
pose than  that  of  keeping  her  this  Girl. 
Intimately  connected  with  this  matter 
of  exercise  in  physical  culture  is  the 
question  of  sleep.  Sleep  is  the  resting- 
phase  of  the  brain's  rhythm.  All  the 
organs  of  the  body  do  their  work 
rhythmically.  The  heart  rests  half  the 
time;  the  lungs,  a  little  more.  Sleep 
not  only  supplies  rest,  but  during  sleep 
the  arteries,  veins,  all  the  circulatory 
organs,  do  a  sort  of  housecleaning.  If 
you  want  your  Girl  to  have  the  vigor 
that  belongs  to  health,  a  freshness  of 
energy  and  spirit,  and  clear  eyesight, 
you  will  see  to  it  that  she  gives  sleep  a 
chance,  say  from  nine  to  ten  hours  in  the 
twenty-four.  She  ought  to  sleep  from 
nine  P.  M.  to  six  or  seven  A.  M.  Ten 
hours  of  sleep,  with  the  body  warmly 
wrapped,  and  some  fresh,  out-door  air 
coming  through  an  open  window;  no 
matter  what  the  weather  may  be,  means 
restoration,  stimulus,  nourishment, 
freedom,  and  immunity  from  diseases 
of  the  respiratory  organs.    No  disease 


BUILDING     YOUR     GIRL     35 

of  these  organs  can  take  root  where 
plenty  of  air  is  allowed. 

Another  typical  feminine  defect  is 
that  of  eating  too  little  substantial, 
nourishing  food,  and  the  habit  of  nib- 
bling at  sweets,  pickles,  and  pastry, 
thus  spoiling  a  healthful  appetite,  and 
forcing  her  into  the  habit  of  falling  back 
on  nervous  excitement  for  the  lack  of 
natural  strength.  The  blessing  will 
come  to  the  Girl  when,  like  her  brother, 
she  becomes  sensible  of  real  hunger, 
fights  the  disposition  to  draw  on  her 
nervous  capital  to  supply  what  solid 
food  should  supply.  She  makes  this 
waste  of  nervous  strength  always  under 
the  foolish  notion  that  if  she  would  have 
"  genteel "  physical  proportions,  she 
must  check  her  appetite  for  healthy 
food.  That  is  a  vulgar  idiotism.  A 
Girl,  like  her  brother,  is  first  an  animal, 
and  if  she  desires  to  be  the  crown  of  the 
animal  kingdom,  she  will,  like  animals, 
struggle  for  strong,  hearty  food  for  her 
physical  development.  She  will  cer- 
tainly find  some  pounds  of  superfluous 


S6      BUILDING    YOUR    GIRL 

adipose  flesh  a  more  agreeable  burden 
than  a  perpetual  dyspeptic  pain,  with 
a  "  genteel "  physique.  She  will  escape 
both  of  these  undesirable  conditions 
under  your  care  in  her  building.  It  is 
a  good  thing  for  our  girls,  that  our 
novelistic  literature  has  taken  up  the 
matter  to  the  extent  of  showing  that 
Fielding's  Sophia,  with  her  little  sack-o' 
whey,  and  that  very  weak,  no  longer 
belongs  to  the  race  of  heroines,  and  that 
a  good  hearty  dinner,  enjoyed  by  a 
young  girl,  is  preferable  to  nibbles,  and 
is  more  compatible  with  physical  beauty, 
even  daintiness.  In  the  training  and 
education  of  your  Girl  these  are  vitally 
important  things;  they  deal  directly 
with  her  health  and  general  physical 
culture,  and  are  allied,  beyond  any 
divorcement,  with  her  mental  and  moral 
development.  They  should  have  a 
goodly  share  of  your  thought  and  care 
in  your  work  of  building  your  Girl.  It 
would  be  a  sad  mistake  not  to  do  this. 


IV 
A  GIRL  AND  HER  READING 

IN  Girl-building,  one  of  the  vitally 
important  and  more  or  less  perplex- 
ing problems  confronting  a  wise  and 
deeply  concerned  parenthood,  is  that  of 
the  proper  cultivation  of  her  taste  for 
reading.  Involved  are  the  questions  of 
knowing  how,  when,  and  what  to  read ; 
whether  to  practise  real  and  mechan- 
ical reading,  with  or  without  reflection; 
reading  for  amusement  and  recreation; 
reading  for  intellectual  cultivation  and 
mental  culture ;  reading  for  help ;  read- 
ing for  morals,  and  half  a  hundred  other 
questions.  So  to  guide  your  bright, 
eager,  growing  Girl,  the  modern  aver- 
age Girl  of  the  average  American 
home,  through  the  maze  of  literature, 
that  her  use  of  it,  whatever  the  purpose 
and  object,  shall  prove  an  enrichment, 
will  be  a  task  for  your  best  judgment, 
your  wisest  considerateness,  your  sense 
of  justice  and  charity,  and  your  tact. 

37 


38      BUILDING     YOUR     GIRL 

And  withal,  it  is  a  pleasant  task,  about 
which  you  should  be  optimistic. 

Even  before  your  Girl  becomes  a 
reader  of  books,  it  will  be  a  helpful  thing 
to  have  occasional  talks;  not  didactic 
or  pedagogic  lectures,  but  pleasant,  in- 
formal, chatty  talks  with  her  about 
literature  in  general,  —  the  different 
characters  it  assumes,  its  object,  its 
value,  and  its  influence  upon  the  mind 
and  heart  and  life  of  the  reader. 

The  idea  that  there  is  but  one  proper 
aim  in  book-reading  is  an  absurdity  on 
the  face  of  it.  It  is  a  sort  of  bigotry, 
and  the  outcome  of  crooked  thinking. 
There  are  a  dozen  aims  in  reading,  and 
all  are  proper.  It  is  just  as  proper  for] 
your  Girl  to  read  a  book  that  con-| 
tributes,  and  solely,  to  her  amusement 
and  recreation,  as  it  is  to  read  books 
which  aim  at  the  formation  of  character. 
The  sense  of  humor  and  amusement  and 
mind  relaxation,  as  well  as  bodily  play, 
is  native  and  organic  and  instinctive 
with  us,  and  was  given  for  a  wise  and 
beneficent  purpose;  and  we  are  just  as 


BUILDING     YOUR     GIRL      39 

accountable  for  its  reasonable  use  and 
development,  as  we  are  for  the  care  of 
the  other,  and  more  serious  side  of  our 
natures.  Books  that  serve  no  purpose 
in  the  education  of  the  intellect  or  the 
heart,  are  as  necessary  as  those  which 
are  written  with  this  last  aim. 

It  is  almost  a  penchant  with  too  many 
of  us,  to  forget  that  childhood  is  a  time 
for  enjoyment,  and  that  the  one  object 
of  books,  as  well  as  toys  and  similar 
devices,  is  to  make  and  keep  these 
youngsters  happy.  It  is  an  egregious 
blunder  to  consider  their  happiness 
only  as  a  means  to  some  end;  instruc- 
tion and  obedience,  for  instance. 

Amusement  is  itself  an  end,  a  neces- 
sity of  both  the  physical  and  the  moral 
nature;  a  condition  of  growth  and  de- 
velopment. If  your  Girl  can  find  it 
in  a  book  that  serves  no  other  purpose, 
be  glad  about  it.  If  the  humor  and 
amusement  in  a  book  are  clean  and 
wholesome,  it  is  enough;  something 
valuable  will  be  gained.  These  simple 
talks  with  your  Girl  about  books  may, 


40     BUILDING     YOUR     GIRL 

with  advantage,  be  made  a  part  of  the 
home  life  during  her  earlier  school  days, 
before  she  enters  the  high  school.  They 
will  serve  to  awaken  interest  in  litera- 
ture, and  help  her  to  approach  it  more 
or  less  intelligently. 

How  to  read  is  one  of  the  important 
faculties  to  be  acquired.  Unless  you 
are  more  fortunate  than  the  average 
parent,  you  will  encounter  more  or  less 
difficulty  in  this  part  of  your  Girl- 
building.  It  is  desirable,  of  course,  that 
there  should  be  a  methodical  process  in 
reading.  But  most  Girls,  in  their  read- 
ing, are  like  Bobby  in  his  eating.  He 
went  to  spend  a  vacation  with  an  Aunt 
who  was  a  stickler  for  certain  breakfast 
foods.  Bobby  worried  through  his 
breakfast  a  few  mornings,  and  then, 
addressing  his  Aunt  very  politely  but 
firmly,  said,  "Aunty,  I  don't  want 
nutritious  food;  I  want  to  eat  what  I'd 
rather."  So,  the  average  Girl,  with  an 
awakened  taste  for  reading — and  a 
keen  appetite  it  is  at  the  outset  —  will 
not   care   for  nutritious   reading,   like 


BUILDING     YOUR     GIRL     41 

science,  and  physics,  and  geology,  and 
chemistry,  and  history,  and  biography 
even  when  the  subjects  are  deHghtfuUy 
treated,  and  adapted  to  young  girlhood. 
She  wants  to  read  what  she'd  "  rather," 
and  the  "rather"  gravitates  to  story 
books.  The  wise  thing  to  do  is,  not  to 
deprive  her  altogether  of  this  story- 
reading;  for  mental  entertainment  is 
her  inalienable  right;  but  help  her  in 
selecting  the  very  best  books  of  the 
story-telling  kind,  pleasantly  bargain- 
ing that  some  of  her  reading-time  shall 
be  given  to  books  of  a  more  "nutri- 
tious" character.  In  this  way,  a 
methodical  course  of  reading  may  be 
attained.  It  will  be  well  to  remember 
that  it  is  neither  necessary,  nor  a  fact, 
that  all  your  Girl's  knowledge  should 
come  to  her  in  the  shape  of  knowledge. 
A  duty  or  a  principle  may  be  as  vividly 
illustrated  in  a  story  of  home  life,  as  in 
an  editorial  or  a  sermon;  indeed,  is  far 
more  likely  to  make  its  way  into  the 
conscience,  in  the  story,  than  in  the 
sermon.     The   greatest   art   in   story- 


42     BUILDING     YOUR     GIRL 

writing,  is  to  make  the  principle  to  be 
taught  a  genuine  element  in  the  story. 
As  your  Girl  comes  to  the  years  of 
real  reading,  this  fact  about  reading 
should  be  a  large  part  of  your  guidance. 
Teach  your  Girl  to  discover  the  prin- 
ciple which  the  author  aims  to  inculcate, 
among  the  first  things,  and  if  it  appeals 
to  her  sense  of  right,  read  it,  in  order 
to  absorb  its  worth  as  a  principle.  That 
is  why  the  Bible  is  of  real  worth  as 
literature.  It  starts  up  a  principle,  then 
sets  up  a  character — a  real  one  in  this 
ease  —  to  show  how  it  works  out  in  life. 
In  that  book  of  human  documents,  we 
see  how  a  good  man  lived,  and  how  he 
came  out;  in  other  phrasing,  how  the 
principle  worked  in  real  life.  There 
is  a  good  deal  of  mechanical  reading  in 
our  day;  reading  for  the  story,  getting 
the  husks,  and  digesting  nothing.  We 
read  out  of  proportion  to  our  thinking. 
We  devour  a  great  many  books,  with- 
out knowing  anything  about  them. 
You  will  find  it  a  good  plan  to  have 
your  Girl  talk  freely  about  the  book 


BUILDING     YOUR     GIRL     43 

she  is  reading;  to  discuss  its  merits  and 
demerits  with  her;  to  discuss  its  style, 
diction,  aim  and  characters.  In  this 
way  she  will  unconsciously  reveal  the 
character  of  her  daily  reading,  and  open 
the  way  to  your  hearty  commendation, 
or  to  the  need  of  your  comment  in  cor- 
rection of  a  fault. 

The  share  of  time  which  your  Girl  is 
to  give  to  reading,  and,  in  some 
measure,  the  quality  of  it,  must  neces- 
sarily depend  upon  circumstances.  As 
a  girl  at  school,  she  must  devote  most 
of  her  hours  to  study,  and  any  habit 
of  extensive  and  various  reading  will 
be  detrimental.  Such  a  habit  will  re- 
sult in  unfitness  for  hard  study.  That 
a  Girl  still  in  school,  even  the  high 
school,  ought  not  to  read  the  so-called 
society  novel  should  go  without  saying. 
Even  if  the  books  read  are  in  the  line 
of  school  studies,  there  should  be  a 
reasonable  limitation  to  their  number. 
Play,  in  the  purest  sense,  will  be  more 
to  the  purpose  of  development  than 
reading. 


44     BUILDING     YOUR     GIRL 

As  your  Girl  reaches  the  threshold 
of  young  womanhood,  and  her  girlhood 
lies  behind  her,  the  question  of  what  to 
read  relates  in  a  larger  and  a  more  dis- 
tinctive sense  to  the  fashioning  of  her 
intellectual  culture  and  moral  char- 
acter. Disciplined  and  trained,  she  is 
more  thinkingly  and  reflectively  read- 
ing with  more  concentration  of  thought. 
With  her,  the  influence  of  books  is 
greater;  their  inspiration  more  impel- 
ling. For  these  very  reasons,  you  are 
still  to  be  her  censor  and  mentor.  There 
is  no  dearth  of  books,  and  books  of  the 
proper  kind  for  your  Girl's  reading. 
Books  published  nowadays  are  not  one 
whit  less  valuable  than  the  books  of 
former  years.  There  are  books  that  are 
of  a  questionable  character,  plenty  of 
them;  but  there  are  good  books,  plenty 
of  them.  As  Bacon  says,  "  Some  books 
are  to  be  tasted ;  others  to  be  swallowed, 
and  some  few  to  be  chewed  and 
digested."  If  there  are  books  of  a 
questionable  character,  it  is  simply  be- 
cause there  is  a  demand  for  them. 

Now  and  then  somebody  takes  fright, 


BUILDING     YOUR     GIRL     45 

and  has  a  good  deal  to  say  concerning 
the  extent  and  importance  of  the  in- 
fluence of  literary  people  upon  the 
masses.  They  never  say  anything 
about  the  reflex  influence.  Literary 
people  are  under  the  conscious  necessity 
of  adjusting  themselves  and  their  work 
to  the  customs,  notions,  and  demands 
of  those  among  whom  they  live.  There 
is  always  this  silent  attraction  which 
everywhere  assimilates  men,  uncon- 
sciously. It  is  inevitable  that  these  men 
should  adapt  their  work  to  the  minds 
that  demand  it.  What  the  people  who 
read  books  desire  to  read,  that  thing, 
some  writer  who  divines  the  popular 
heart  or  fancy,  will  endeavor  to  put  on 
the  bridge  of  print.  Literary  men, 
good  and  bad,  will  be  prompted  to  pro- 
duce just  what  they  think  will  be  read 
and  applauded.  If  there  are  books  of  a 
questionable  character  on  the  market,  it 
is  simply  and  only  because  of  the  de- 
mand for  them.  It  is  the  reflex  influ- 
ence of  which  we  speak.  Stop  the  de- 
mand, and  the  supply  will  cease. 

No  one  is  under  obligations  even  to 


46      BUILDING     YOUR     GIRL 

taste  a  book  of  questionable  character, 
much  less  chew  and  digest  it.     But  in 
building  your  Girl  it  is  well  to  remem- 
ber, that  simply  to  teach  her  to  avoid 
books  of  a  questionable  character  is  not 
enough.     It  is  evident  that  what  she 
reads  largely  determines  her  intellectual . 
culture,  the  character  of  her  education. 
Hence,  there  is  an  imperative  demand  j 
for  a  careful  selection  of  what  we  term  ? 
good  books.    These  she  should  read  with 
discretion,  if  through  their  influence  she 
is  to  grow  in  intellect  and  morals. 

Necessarily,  while  your  Girl  should 
not  become  an  omnivorous  novel-reader, 
the  novel  is  a  marked  and  characteristic 
form  of  modern  literary  activity.  Here, 
then,  is  an  acreage  for  the  exercise 
of  your  intelligent  discretion.  Clearly, 
your  Girl  is  entitled  to  the  enjoyment 
and  the  profit  there  is  in  the  use  of  im- 
aginative literature — whether  romance, 
the  purpose  novel,  the  historical  novel, 
the  novel  of  manners,  or  the  sentimental 
novel. 

It  remains  for  you  to  see  that  she  has 
the  very  best  of  novelistic  literature  —  a 


BUILDING     YOUR     GIRL     47 

reasonable  share  of  it — to  guard  against 
indiscriminate  reading,  and  the  cultiva- 
tion of  a  taste  that  is  confined  to  novel- 
reading  only. 

Many  otherwise  intelligent  people 
have  the  notion  that  the  imagination  is 
a  faculty  which  necessarily  manifests  in 
its  operation  a  certain  falseness.  That 
is  an  error.  One  man  has  common  sense ; 
another  has  imagination.  The  one  sees 
things  as  they  are ;  the  other  sees  things 
as  they  are  not.  The  truth  is,  that  the 
man  whose  imagination  is  the  most  in- 
tense and  exalted,  is  the  man  whose  im- 
pressions of  things  are  in  general  the 
most  truthful  and  exact.  It  is  under- 
stood, of  course,  that  while  the  imagina- 
tion in  different  people  works  under 
different  laws,  it  must  be  kept  in  such 
subjection  that  it  neither  unduly  vital- 
izes or  exalts,  nor  in  the  other  case,  dis- 
colors or  exaggerates.  Among  writers, 
George  Eliot  stands  sponsor  for  the  first 
class,  and  Hawthorne  for  the  second. 
A  man  whose  intellectual  culture  has 
been  of  the  proper  kind,  enjoys  a  good 
novel,  simply  because  it  is  a  novel,  and, 


48      BUILDING    YOUR     GIRL 

like  the  highest  poetry,  does  not  deal 
with  the  mere  truth  of  fact.  This  is 
the  mental  sustenance  your  Girl  should 
have.  Her  books  of  study  have  already 
told  her  what  is ;  a  good  class  of  imagi- 
native literature  will  tell  her  what  might 
be,  or  at  least,  lead  her  to  think  of  what 
ought  to  be.  And  she  will  delight  in  it. 
It  will  do  her  a  great  service.  It  will 
refresh  and  strengthen  her,  even  if  it 
helps  her  to  put  into  words  but  a 
single  proposition  which  her  judgment 
accepts.  It  will  stir,  and  set  afoot,  per- 
haps, her  observant  and  reflective  facul- 
ties. She  will  be  carried  out  from  her- 
self, and  come  to  a  larger  vision  of  life. 
The  real  novelist  is  a  teacher.  Take 
Dickens  to  illustrate  the  point.  It  may 
be  doubted  if  you  will  find  in  the  writ- 
ings of  any  author,  in  any  language,  so 
many  beautiful  and  various  picturings 
of  marriage  and  the  domestic  life 
springing  from  it,  as  in  Dickens'  works. 
The  wonderful  fidelity,  subtle  delicacy, 
and  accurate  helpfulness  of  these  pic- 
turings, are  something  precious.  Neither 


BUILDING     YOUR     GIRL     49 

heart  nor  memory  will  ever  give  them 
up,  once  they  are  lodged.  These  char- 
acters are  our  friends,  and  will  evermore 
influence  us  for  our  good.  Dickens, 
with  his  subtle  knowledge  of  the  needs 
of  his  kind,  goes  still  further  in  his  pic- 
turings,  and  by  the  most  accurate  yet 
tender  and  loving  analysis,  shows  us  the 
cardinal  principle  of  true  consideration 
for  children.  Nothing  finer,  or  truer, 
or  more  fascinating  in  this  direction, 
was  ever  put  into  a  book,  than  the  vivid 
dramatic  showing  of  the  temptations, 
frailties,  ambitions,  and  entire  emotions 
of  a  child's  nature,  that  is  depicted  in 
the  history  of  the  beginning  of  Pip's 
life,  in  the  opening  chapters  of  "  Great 
Expectation." 

In  thinking  of  this  characteristic 
power  and  charm  of  Dickens,  in  rela- 
tion to  some  of  our  more  modern 
authors,  it  may  be  questioned  whether 
any  of  them  shares  it  more  largely  than 
the  author  of  "  The  Deliverance,"  "  The 
Ancient  Law,"  and  other  books.  She 
has  accurate  analysis.    She  knows  where 


50      BUILDING     YOUR     GIRL 

to  find  the  hidden  springs  of  action  in 
human  nature,  and  she  has  the  artist-' 
faculty  of  language,  to  make  it  visible 
to  the  reader.  It  is  a  great  fact  that 
the  novel,  as  well  as  other  literature,  is 
the  great  white  way  for  tens  of  thou- 
sands, who  often  long  to  get  away  from 
themselves,  and  have  a  larger  outlook 
on  life,  and  a  more  diversified  compan- 
ionship. Books  satisfy  this  longing, 
and  they  prove  inspirational.  The  in- 
spiration of  a  good  book  has  made  great 
men  and  noble  women.  And  your  Girl 
cannot  have  a  better  incentive  toward 
good  reading  than  your  interest  in  what 
she  reads;  an  interest  that  discusses  it 
with  her,  that  encourages  her  without 
any  flattery ;  that  never  makes  her  prig- 
gish, nor  laughs  at  her  rtiistakes;  con- 
triving in  a  genial  fashion  to  show 
appreciation  of  her  progress  in  this  fea- 
ture of  her  development. 

A  while  ago  making  out  a  list  of 
books  of  the  right  sort  may  have  been 
possible.  To  attempt  it  now  is  to  invite 
an  unmerciful  quizzing.     It  is  unthink- 


BUILDING     YOUR     GIRL      51 

able  that  any  list  made  should  escape 
the  prejudice  of  the  maker.  We  all 
know  a  few  books  that  are  indescribably- 
delicious.  To  read  them  is  like  eating 
honey  on  good  sweet  bread. 

Assuming  that  you  have  tactfully 
used  your  parental  privilege,  in  this 
reading  portion  of  Girl-building,  she 
will  have  neither  the  opportunity  nor  the 
disposition  for  reading  trashy,  or  other- 
wise objectionable  literature.  There 
will  be  simply  no  question  of  it. 

These  harmful  books  are  plentiful, — 
books  that  are  apologetic  for  a  loosen- 
ing of  the  strenuous  curb  which  pru- 
dence puts  upon  immoralities;  preten- 
tious books,  in  the  blue  of  the  sky  and 
the  gold  of  the  mint,  the  society  adven- 
tures of  a  low,  debasing  philosophy  am- 
bushed in  brilliant  diction,  every  chapter 
filled  with  wild,  unnatural  craving,  and 
glowing  with  frenzied  passion.  The 
whole  teaching  of  such  a  book,  is,  that 
society  shall  cut  loose  from  the  safe 
anchorage  of  a  moral  conscience,  and  be 


52     BUILDING     YOUR     GIRL 

fast  and  free  in  living  and  thinking. 
About  all  this  falseness,  the  author 
throws  a  mantle  of  rose-hued  light,  so 
that  the  weak  are  misled,  and  even  the 
thoughtful  are  sometimes  blinded.  The 
banquet  is  attractively  spread,  and  the 
evil  forms  look  persuasively  out  from 
the  tessellated  halls  and  through  the 
richly  embroidered  curtains  of  this  lit- 
erature. It  is  the  literature  of  the  new 
school  of  vice  now  in  vogue,  skilfully 
draped.  It  is  termed  morality,  because 
the  vogue  calls  it  realism.  Your  rightly 
guided  Girl  will  have  little  or  no  dispo- 
sition to  feed  her  mind  upon  this  kind 
of  literature.  Much  of  it  is  printed 
poison.  The  good  are  even  more  plen- 
tiful; novels  that  are  clean  and  pure 
and  wholesome;  full  of  mental  and 
moral  nutrition;  feeding  bountifully  in 
true  and  harmless  and  beautiful  ways; 
novels  with  all  the  graces  of  language, 
pure  and  clear,  their  theme  blending 
culture  and  entertainment,  strengthen- 
ing, enriching;  novels  that  will  not  set 
the  nerves  a-tingling  or  the  heart  beat- 


BUILDING     YOUR     GIRL     53 

ing  out  of  the  normal;  novels  that  ap- 
peal to  the  deepest  feelings,  and  to  our 
moral  sensibilities. 

In  her  acquirement  of  a  taste  for  his- 
tory, and  biography,  and  poetry,  and 
travel,  your  Girl  must  necessarily  spend 
a  considerable  portion  of  the  time  al- 
lotted to  reading,  and  something  like 
thirty  or  forty  books  of  the  novel  char- 
acter will  be  the  limit  of  her  achieve- 
ment for  the  year.  It  is  said  that  thirty 
thousand  new  books  are  published  an- 
nually. If  your  Girl  has  had  some; 
training  in  the  art  of  reading  books 
skippingly,  she  may  get  the  best  out  of,  ^ 
a  book  in  an  hour  or  two.  In  this  w^ay, 
she  may  increase  the  number  read.  But 
she  cannot  at  best,  keep  up  with  the 
procession  of  even  the  best  books. 
Besides,  she  must,  necessarily,  reach 
back  and  become  familiar  with  such 
literary  work  as  that  of  authors  like 
Tennyson,  Whittier,  Scott,  Dickens, 
Goldsmith,  Mulock,  Thackeray,  Gas- 
kell,  Macaulay,  Bryant,  Eliot,  Goethe, 
and  others  of  their  class,  and  still  make 


f 


54      BUILDING     YOUR     GIRL 

choice  of  reading  from  among  writers 
of  a  more  recent  day  and  of  the  present : 
Thoreau,  Roberts,  Cooper,  Jewett,  Cur- 
tis, Cable,  Chambers,  Gilbert,  Glasgow, 
Craddock,  Sowells,  Freeman,  Wiggins, 
Mitchell,  Hawthorne,  Ward,  Van  Dyke, 
Johnson,  Allen,  Fox,  Riley,  Thompson, 
Rice,  Wister,  Reed,  Miller,  Churchill, 
and  perhaps  half  as  many  more. 

From  among  the  books  of  these 
authors,  and  with  your  help,  your  Girl 
is  to  make  choice  of  her  reading-matter, 
— matter  that  will  stimulate  the  brain, 
impart  an  appreciation  of  what  is  beau- 
tiful and  of  real  worth,  inspire  to  the 
higher  purposes  of  life,  be  a  means  of 
culture  and  refinement. 


V 

YOUR  GIRL  AND  HER 
ETHICAL  TRAINING 

IN  building  your  Girl,  keep  ready  in 
your  mind  the  fact  that  if  there  ever 
has  been  in  the  life  of  woman  a  super- 
imposed inability  to  make  use  of  her 
power  in  practical  and  normal  activities 
in  life  and  living,  it  has  ceased  to  be. 
Your  Girl  is  coming  on  to  take  a  much 
larger  share  in  these  world  and  life 
activities,  than  the  girl  of  a  score  of 
years  ago,  and  it  is  your  great  privilege 
to  accept  the  fact,  and  to  give  her  the 
fullest  benefit  of  your  knowledge  and 
experience  in  her  education  and  train- 
ing for  it.  Our  age  is  busy  making  a 
new  power  for  service  to  humanity  and 
the  world,  out  of  this  feminine  material ; 
and  the  new  exaltation  of  the  sentiment, 
not  only  dooms  to  obscurity  a  great  col- 
lection of  false  notions  with  relation  to 
the  inferiority  of  woman,  but  presages 
a  great  good  in  the  world.    That  old 

55 


56      BUILDING     YOUR     GIRL 

idea  of  the  man's  exclusiveness  in  the 
acreages  of  reason  and  ethics  and  intel- 
lectual strength,  is  rapidly  passing,  as 
man  advances  in  knowledge  and  wis- 
dom. Not  only  the  man,  but  the  woman 
as  well,  came  with  a  mind  that  can  work 
its  way  upward.  Woman,  as  well  as 
man,  carries  within  her  a  kingdom  of 
ethical  and  spiritual  wealth  and  power ; 
a  travelling  soul.  This  is  the  age  of 
mankind,  and  when  an  age  is  making 
great  character,  it  uses  all  manhood  and 
womanhood,  young  and  old.  Your 
Girl  is  included.  Our  years  can  say  to 
the  old  years,  "My  ways  are  higher 
than  your  ways,  my  thoughts  are  higher 
than  your  thoughts." 

Bear  in  mind,  and  teach  your  Girl  to 
bear  in  mind,  that  it  is  the  use  to  which 
we  put  our  possessions  that  tells  in  the 
history  of  life.  Teach  her  that  the  best 
morals  are  the  morals  which  do  the  best 
in  service,  just  as  the  best  religion  is 
that  whose  creed  and  code  are  practical, 
helpful  service  for  humanity.  It  is  the 
only  religion  of  real  worth. 


BUILDING     YOUR     GIRL      57 

Girl-building  must  have  a  firmly  set 
ethical  basis.  Character  is  moulded  by 
thought  and  association.  Your  Girl 
has  not  come  into  the  world,  to  move 
through  her  life  alone.  That  would 
make  of  her  an  oddity.  The  Creator 
never  made  an  odd  man  or  woman. 
Not  any  more,  than  He  made  an  ear  of 
corn,  with  an  odd  number  of  rows  for 
the  grains.  No  field  or  crib  ever  held 
such  an  ear  of  corn.  At  some  point  in 
life  every  human  being  touches  the 
world  and  life  of  humanity,  and  for 
that  touch,  it  either  rises  or  falls.  The 
conscious  or  the  unconscious  influence 
of  every  human  being  is  always  at  work, 
mayhap  setting  the  concert  pitch  of 
other  lives,  for  all  time. 

By  culture  we  mean  training  all  the 
powers  and  capacities  of  the  being  to 
the  highest  pitch,  and  directing  them  to 
their  true  ends;  in  ethical  culture,  car- 
rying the  best  there  is  in  us,  to  the  high- 
est plane  of  moral  energy.  It  is  not  so 
much  the  pouring  in  of  knowledge,  as 
it  is  the  leading  forth  into  a  larger  de- 


58     BUILDING     YOUR     GIRL 

velopment,  of  powers  already  possessed 
but  latent. 

Nature  has  conferred  upon  your  Girl 
physical,  mental  and  moral  possibilities. 
These  are  capable  of  growth  in  train- 
ing. It  is  one  province  of  education, 
to  unfold  them ;  not  one,  but  all  of  them. 
But  education  must  embrace  the  cul- 
ture of  the  affections,  no  less  than  of  the 
mind.  That  is  one  phase  on  the  moral 
side.  It  ought  to  lead  to  an  enlarged 
sympathy  for  service  to  humanity. 
Many  people  who  are  ignorant  in  other 
directions  have  a  genius  for  the  best  use 
of  the  affections.  It  makes  good,  help- 
ful personalities.  Sympathy,  by  an 
appeal  to  it,  may  grow  as  fine  as  the 
intellect. 

The  beginning  of  this,  for  your  Girl, 
means  her  possession  of  an  ideal.  And 
the  aim  which  rules  the  life  of  your  Girl 
should  be  ideal.  To  this  end,  her  train- 
ing must  bring  her  into  contact  with 
what  is  best  and  greatest  in  the  thoughts, 
the  sentiments,  and  the  deeds  of  men 
and  women  of  the  past  and  present  gen- 


BUILDING     YOUR     GIRL     59 

erations.  She  must  have,  as  well,  a 
social  basis;  intercourse  with  living 
hearts,  as  well  as  with  dead  books ;  with 
people  whose  minds  and  characters  are 
fitted  to  instruct,  elevate,  and  sweeten 
her  own.  This  she  must  have  besides 
the  discipline  which  she  must  carry  on 
with  herself  in  learning  self-control, 
self-possession,  and  self-reliance,  and 
the  formation  of  habits,  to  strengthen 
what  is  good  in  her  own  nature.  She 
must  starve  whatever  of  evil  there  is  in 
her  nature,  bv  feeding  the  good  there  is 
in  it. 

Whatever  the  difference  between 
the  ideal  and  the  real,  we  must  seek  the 
ideal.  We  cannot  safely  shut  out  the 
vision.  An  invisible  attraction  draws 
us  toward  the  perfect  in  every  depart- 
ment of  life. 

Most  of  us  are  actuated  by  the  ideal ; 
some  of  us  are  quite  wholly  governed 
by  it.  Even  if  our  sordid  self  swings 
us  into  the  last  ditch  of  a  paltry  inde- 
cision, we  never  altogether  lose  the 
vision  of  the  ideal  that  beckoned  us  to 


60      BUILDING     YOUR     GIRL 

the  higher,  richer,  better  things.  The 
memory  of  it  may  swim  to  us  in  tears 
of  contrition,  but  the  vision  haunts  us 
—  a  shame-spot  in  our  lives.  It  is  that 
instinctive  passion  for  perfection  which 
went  into  the  Edenic  clay  temple  as  a 
part  of  life. 

The  idealistic  must  be  the  chief  factor 
in  the  successful  life.  Indifference  to 
it  means  failure.  Your  Girl  desires  to 
be  a  strong,  wholesome,  useful,  and 
helpful  personality,  an  individuality 
with  a  definite  purpose;  giving  some- 
thing of  her  faith  to  the  faithless ;  some- 
thing of  her  own  vibrant  joy  to  the 
joyless;  something  of  her  strength  to 
the  strengthless.  These  graces  in  action 
are  to  be  no  mere  incident  in  her  life, 
but  a  characteristic  feature,  an  abiding 
law.     It  is  an  ideal  worth  every  effort. 

In  training  your  Girl,  and  showing 
her  the  importance  of  the  ideal  as  a  fac- 
tor in  her  life,  you  will  be  fortunate  if, 
in  her  case,  you  escape  one  danger,  and 
the  work  of  overcoming  it.  It  is  this: 
The  tendency  of  young  girls,  and  young 


BUILDING     YOUR     GIRL     61 

men,  to  consider  themselves  as  so  insig- 
nificant that  it  matters  little  what  they 
do,  or  how  they  do  it.  The  contrast 
between  the  greatness  of  what  there  is 
to  be  done  and  the  minuteness  of  what 
each  one  is  able  to  do,  is  apt  to  strike 
almost  any  one  with  a  discouraging 
effect.  And  so  comes  the  self-ques- 
tioning, Is  it  worth  while  to  try?  Such 
a  question  is  like  a  sad  refrain,  rather 
than  a  hopeful,  earnest  tone  that  would 
summon  effort  and  promise  success. 

This  will  be  especially  manifest  after 
the  first  flush  of  youthful  enthusiasm  is 
over,  and  before  the  realities  and  actu- 
alities of  life  come  to  be  fathomed.  At 
this  point  you  will  find  exercise  for  your 
ripest  judgment,  your  patient,  genial 
guidance.  As  yoiu*  Girl  discovers  how 
vast  are  the  fields  of  knowledge ;  as  she 
becomes  acquainted  with  the  men  and 
women  who  are  held  as  leaders  in  liter- 
ature and  science  and  music,  the  phi- 
lanthropic and  sociological  work  of  the 
world,  and  realizes  how  much  they  have 
accomplished,   how   deeply   they   have 


62     BUILDING     YOUR     GIRL 

delved  into  the  secrets  of  nature  and 
human  nature,  and  with  what  power 
they  have  worked  and  are  still  working, 
she  will  be  sorely  tempted  to  contrast 
her  own  small  abilities  with  theirs,  and 
to  conclude  that  it  is  hardly  worthwhile 
to  set  so  insignificant  a  factor  to  work 
upon  such  great  problems.  Right  there 
lies  your  opportunity;  your  opportun- 
ity to  reveal  to  your  Girl  the  earlier 
lives  of  these  men  and  women,  the  toil 
and  effort,  the  stress  and  strain  with 
their  own  once  insignificant  lives  and 
abilities,  on  their  way  up  to  leadership ; 
your  opportunity  to  keep  your  Girl  so 
heartened  and  hopeful  that  she  will  not 
lose  her  ideal. 

This  "  Is  it  worth  while? "  is  the  con- 
clusion and  the  grave  of  many  bright 
ambitions,  many  high  hopes,  many  rich 
promises.  It  is  the  cause,  too,  of  much 
of  the  inefficiency  of  the  work  of  the 
world.  You  can  show  your  Girl  that, 
if  every  person  of  small  or  moderate 
ability  should  shrink  from  endeavor 
because  he  can  do  so  little,  the  world 
would    soon    become    bankrupt.     You 


BUILDING     YOUR     GIRL     63 

can  make  it  clear  to  your  Girl,  that  she 
cannot  tell  how  much  power  she  can 
develop  by  effort,  while  it  is  quite  cer- 
tain that  without  effort  she  can  develop 
none  worth  thinking  of  twice.  Power 
of  any  kind  grows  by  exercise;  so  with 
skill.  It  is  often  the  case  that  the 
rarest  genius  has  dwindled  into  ineffi- 
ciency, while  moderate  talent  has  be- 
come, through  perseverance,  a  great 
force  in  the  world's  activities.  And 
you  should  urge  the  point  that,  whether 
or  not  she  becomes  a  factor  in  the 
world's  work,  her  own  work  is  marked 
out  for  her;  and  if  she  neglects  it,  no 
one  else  can  do  it,  and  the  world  becomes 
the  loser;  to  what  extent,  no  one  can 
tell.  Whatever  you  do  for  your  Girl, 
fight  tactfully  the  self-depreciation 
which  prompts  her  to  question  the 
"worth  while"  of  effort.  Lead  her 
away  from  self,  and  into  thinking  of 
the  work  to  be  done  in  the  betterment 
of  the  world. 

Genially,  tactfully,  guide  your  Girl 
beyond  the  point  of  indecision  as  to 
whether  she  will  carry  her  life  up  to 


64     BUILDING     YOUR     GIRL 

where  it  will  be  a  force  for  practical 
good,  or  let  it  drift  with  the  tide  of 
commonplaces.  Like  others,  your  Girl 
will  ask  herself  that  question;  you  can 
help  her  in  the  right  answering.  You 
can  point  out  that  the  goodward  motive 
is  below  the  ideal.  The  motive  is  born 
in  the  conscience,  in  the  instinct,  in  our 
consciousness. 

The  world  would  be  utterly  bankrupt 
without  the  goodward  motive,  which 
binds  together  the  tens  of  thousands  of 
splendid  men  and  noble  women  who  are 
at  work  in  the  fields  of  philanthropy, 
and  science,  and  sociology,  and  humani- 
tarianism,  for  the  good  and  the  better- 
ment of  the  race ;  but  their  efforts  make 
life  easier,  more  joyous,  purer,  cleaner, 
more  wholesome.  These  workers  with 
the  goodward  motive  are  always  taking 
the  next  step  upward.  Behind  it  there 
are  integrity,  conscientiousness,  sincer- 
ity, fairness,  justice,  benevolence,  char- 
ity, and  helpfulness.  These  are  the 
inspirers  of  moral,  social,  and.  intellec- 
tual life.     Even  in  the  imperfect  de- 


BUILDING     YOUR     GIRL     65 

gree  in  which  they  have  been  found; 
even  in  the  face  of  many  blunders  and 
errors,  they  are  the  salt  of  the  earth,  the 
sunshine  of  human  existence. 

Nothing  imaginable  could  for  an 
hour  take  the  place  of  these  graces  and 
virtues,  which  are  carried  into  Ufe  by 
these  workers.  It  is  unthinkable  that 
any  inventiveness  or  mental  brilliancy 
could  ever  take  the  place  of  integrity, 
or  honesty,  or  moral  cleanness,  or  faith- 
fulness and  good  will,  in  the  homes  and 
lives  of  men. 

All  this  had  but  one  origin  and 
source.  Not  in  any  religion,  but  in  the 
life,  conduct,  and  character  of  the  Man 
of  Galilee,  who,  first  of  all  and  above 
all,  was  the  pattern  ethical  man.  He 
was  ethically  perfect,  intellectually  per- 
fect. His  intellect  for  the  discovery 
and  verification  of  truth,  which  was 
quick  to  detect  error,  sophistry,  or 
fraud,  and  His  affectional  and  ethiqal 
nature,  standing  for  rightness,  were  the 
two  sides  of  a  character  that  was  ideal- 
istic.    That  which  evinces  the  personal 


66     BUILDING     YOUR     GIRL 

grandeur  of  this  teacher  is  not  so  much 
the  gospel  He  set  afoot  and  astir  among 
men,  as  the  fact  of  these  human  and 
ethical  graces,  which  He  taught  and 
lived,  and  which  we  can  teach  and  live. 
In  that  truth  our  hopes  centre.  There 
our  fears  die,  there  our  weaknesses  fall. 
We  can  get  these  good  things  into  the 
iron  of  the  blood,  where  they  will  be- 
come vital  and  organic.  There  never 
was  an  end  to  the  Incarnation;  there 
never  will  be.  In  our  doing  these  help- 
ful things,  these  philanthropic,  these 
sociological,  humanitarian  things,  little 
or  great,  there  is  still  an  intermingling, 
an  interweaving,  interlacing,  and  inter- 
threading,  a  blending  of  His  nature  and 
ours.  When  you  stand  in  the  presence 
of  one  of  these  men  or  women,  busy 
working  out  this  goodward  motive,  you 
stand  in  the  presence,  not  of  an  ecclesi- 
astic, so  much,  as  in  the  presence  of  the 
preeminent  ethical  Man  and  Teacher. 
The  hope  of  the  world  lies  in  the 
number  and  character  of  the  recruits 
coming  from  our  schools  and  colleges 
to  take  the  place  of  the  veterans  who 


BUILDING     YOUR     GIRL     67 

fall  by  the  way.  Havoc  smokes  all 
along  the  lines  of  life  and  living,  and 
the  great  work  of  physical,  mental, 
and  moral  rejuvenation  must  go  on. 
Largely,  and  hopefully,  too,  it  will  fall 
into  the  hands  of  young  womanhood 
coming  across  the  threshold  of  our  insti- 
tutions, where  the  ethical  training  is 
dominant  in  the  curriculum;  young 
women,  strong  and  rich  in  their  culture, 
looking  upon  life  and  this  helpful  work 
for  its  betterment  as  a  privilege,  coming 
to  profit  by  the  errors  of  those  who  have 
gone  before,  and  to  make  better  that 
which  was  good.  There  will  never  be 
any  dramatic  coming  of  the  millen- 
nium; no  swift  curtain-raising  amid 
garish  light.  If  it  comes,  it  will  come 
out  of  the  quiet,  forceful  translation  of 
this  new  faith,  into  the  practical  facts  of 
life;  merging  these  principles  of  life 
and  living  into  the  commoner  affairs  of 
the  world.  With  womankind  it  is 
easier  than  with  men;  for  to  them  it  is 
especially  given  to  merge  the  ideal  into 
the  belongings  of  every-day  life. 

Your  Girl  ought  to  be  one  of  these 


68      BUILDING     YOUR     GIRL 

recruits,  doing,  in  her  place  and  with 
her  abilities  (be  they  great  or  small) 
her  share,  little  or  much,  of  what  re- 
mains to  be  done.  So  build  your  Girl 
that  she  shall  see  and  realize  the  beauty 
and  strength  of  little  things.  Her  field 
of  work  may  be  a  small  one,  and  yet 
her  ministry  of  the  little  things  lying 
within  her  environment  (home,  the 
neighborhood,  her  social  place)  may  be, 
can  be,  of  infinite  worth:  little  sympa- 
thies, little  compassions,  little  deeds  of 
kindliness  and  help  just  adding  them- 
selves together  in  unbroken,  unwearied 
succession.  The  completed  beauty  of 
a  life  is  often  only  the  added  beauty 
of  little  inconspicuous  acts.  Existence 
here  may  be  far  too  short  for  great  acts, 
but  long  enough  each  day  to  string 
good  deeds  on  the  line  of  life  like  pearls 
on  the  necklace  of  eternity.  In  this 
field  your  Girl  can  work  easily,  and  do 
her  share  in  the  world's  upbuilding.  It 
is  her  privilege,  and  a  great  one.  So 
guide  and  build  her.  that  she  will  realize 
and  appreciate  it. 


VI 
YOUR  GIRL  AND   THE  ELE- 
MENTS OF  TRUE  WOMAN- 
HOOD 

HERE  we  touch  the  elements  of 
true  womanhood  in  your  Girl- 
building.  We  have  sought  to  empha- 
size the  importance  of  ethical  culture  in 
this  training  of  your  Girl  for  a  large 
and  definite  place  in  the  world's  work, 
— that  culture  which  has  for  its  aim  not 
only  intellectuality,  but  practical  prep- 
aration for  practical  work.  Not  merely 
the  projection  of  your  Girl's  life  in  some 
one  particular  direction,  but  the  en- 
nobling and  enrichment  of  her  whole 
being.  It  will  send  her  to  the  work 
with  a  trained  mind,  a  well-stored  brain, 
and  a  heart  attuned  to  purity  and 
righteousness  and  love.  No  culture  is 
worth  anything,  if  these  virtues  and 
graces  are  not  foundational.  One  may 
not  have  money;  one  may  not  have 
power;  one  may  not  have  cleverness; 

69 


70     BUILDING     YOUR    GIRL 

but  one  must  have  character,  and  behind 
it  a  cultivated  will,  if  one  is  to  get  on  in 
life  and  to  be  of  service. 

At  this  point  in  your  building,  you 
should  impress  upon  your  Girl  the  truth 
that  there  is  an  element  of  danger  in 
self-reliance,  and  self-assertion,  which 
she  ought  to  guard  against.  Naturally, 
we  like  self-reliance  in  a  girl;  we  like 
an  independency  of  spirit;  we  like  self- 
assertion;  we  like  an  independent,  fear- 
less way  of  looking  at  things.  A  Girl 
of  such  a  character  goes  her  own  way, 
shapes  her  own  course;  she  speaks, 
reads,  and  thinks,  after  her  own  fashion. 
Without  it  the  sense  of  the  individual's 
worth  and  place  is  lost,  and  we  think 
of  humanity  in  the  bulk,  not  as  inde- 
pendent entities.  Likable  as  it  is,  it 
has  its  dangers.  Like  energy  without 
judgment,  it  may  prove  an  element  of 
self-destruction.  Like  imagination,  it 
must  be  under  curb  and  restraint.  It 
is  among  young  people  that  the  repre- 
sentatives of  self-reliance  or  independ- 
ence are  found,  especially  among  young 


BUILDING    YOUR    GIRL     71 

women  and  girls.  The  opening  up  of 
the  new  order  for  woman  accentuates 
this  element,  makes  it  more  conspicu- 
ous. There  may  be  an  overestimate  and 
abuse  of  it ;  an  undue  self-reliance.  To 
be  of  downright  good,  self-reliance  must 
be  the  handmaid  of  an  honest  humility. 
Your  Girl  should  not  have  any  doubt 
of  her  power,  nor  any  hesitation  in  giv- 
ing her  opinions ;  nor  any  timidity  either. 
Both  timidity  and  fear,  in  these  rela- 
tions, are  deformities,  they  are  abnor- 
malities. Your  Girl  can  have,  ought 
to  have,  must  have,  a  correct  under- 
standing of  the  relation  between  what 
she  can  do  and  say,  and  the  rest  of  the 
world's  doings  and  sayings.  Any  self- 
reliance  that  snubs,  ignores,  or  is  indif- 
ferent toward  what  the  rest  of  the 
world  is  doing  or  saying,  is  foolish,  or 
ludicrous,  or  both. 

That  sort  of  self-reliance  overesti- 
mates one's  own  value  and  degenerates 
rapidly  into  narrowness  and  conceit. 
If  we  would  learn  anything,  we  must 
be  content  to  remain  ignorant  of  many 


72     BUILDING     YOUR     GIRL 

things,  and  gratefully  accept  the  con- 
clusions other  minds  have  reached 
through  laborious  effort.  In  a  world 
like  this,  it  is  not  possible  for  your  Girl 
to  be  as  independent  as  she  might  wish 
to  be.  It  is  a  splendid  thing  to  map 
out,  as  far  as  possible,  the  life-path;  to 
learn  to  swim  without  help;  to  be  as 
independent  as  we  can;  but  it  is  a  blun- 
der to  repudiate  or  ignore  the  ideas, 
notions  or  conclusions  of  others  about 
us,  under  the  impression,  perhaps,  that 
they  are  all  wrong  and  common.  It 
contracts  the  mental  vision,  and  feeds 
the  prejudices.  Correct  these  ideas, 
notions  and  conclusions,  if  you  will  or 
can,  but  do  not  curtly  repudiate  or 
ignore  them.  In  your  struggle  with 
evil,  you  drive  out  a  strong  man  who 
has  taken  possession,  by  inviting  in  a 
stronger  man  than  he.  So  you  must 
deal  with  these  other  phases  of  life. 
Teach  your  Girl  to  be  self-reliant  and 
conscious  of  the  power  that  has  come  to 
her  through  culture  and  training,  but 
teach  her  to  be  reasonably  modest  in 


BUILDING    YOUR     GIRL     73 

the  use  of  it,  not  antagonistic.  Unhap- 
piness  and  failure  wait  in  the  path  of 
one  who  is  always  deriding  others  in  a 
rude,  supercilious  way.  There  is  noth- 
ing in  justification  of  this  kind  of  self- 
reliance,  or  this  misuse  of  it,  in  the  fact 
that  your  Girl  is  beginning  her  life 
upon  an  advanced  plan;  that  in  this 
electrical  age,  we  are  handling  the  mys- 
teries of  the  old  years  as  the  science  of 
familiar  things;  that  our  possibilities 
are  greatly  enlarged.  Our  vantage- 
ground  is  a  debt  to  past  achievement. 
Let  us  pay  it  with  gratitude,  not  with 
the  snub  of  a  rash  and  boastful  spirit. 
As  was  said  introductorily,  this  is  an 
age  of  the  precocious,  an  age  of  pre- 
maturity, an  age  in  which  the  Girl  is 
already  the  woman.  Even  in  her  early 
teens  she  is  ready  to  assume  direction  of 
things  in  household  belongings,  and  in 
social  life.  She  apes  her  mother's  ways, 
and  is  anxious  to  wield  the  responsibili- 
ties of  life.  Even  where  there  is  no 
necessity  to  urge  her,  she  leaves  school 
oftentimes  just  when  she  should  be  be- 


74     BUILDING     YOUR     GIRL 

ginning  her  education,  and  thrusts  her- 
self into  the  world,  more  than  willing 
to  shake  off  the  habiliments  of  youth 
and  assume  the  place  and  duties  of 
those  who  have  reached  maturity. 

She  has  had  no  adequate  prepara- 
tion. Her  powers  of  mind  and  heart 
are  but  partially  developed.  Intellec- 
tually and  morally,  she  has  hardly  en- 
tered upon  the  work  of  development. 
She  has  no  proper  conceptions  of  life 
in  its  reality;  knows  little,  if  anything, 
of  the  dangers  which  lie  in  ambush 
along  the  way.  For  want  of  training 
she  falls  into  blunders,  and  very  soon 
becomes  a  disheartened,  discouraged 
misfit,  and  an  easy  victim  for  those  who 
prey  upon  the  credulity  of  others.  It 
may  not  mean  a  tragedy  for  this  girl, 
but  it  does  mean  a  small,  incompetent, 
fitful  life. 

The  haste  is  not  good.  Whatever  is 
worth  doing,  is  worth  doing  well.  There 
is  neither  a  short  nor  a  royal  road  to 
either  learning,  success,  or  the  proper 
equipment    for    life-work.      There    is 


BUILDING     YOUR     GIRL     75 

nothing  spontaneous  about  it.  The 
element  of  time  must  be  a  factor  in  the 
calculation.  Real  achievements  have 
always  been  the  outcome  of  long  con- 
tinued exertion.  If  your  Girl  is  to 
take  a  place  in  the  world  where  she  will 
be  a  force  and  a  power  for  service,  she 
must  be  taught  to  toil  at  her  culturing; 
to  persevere,  until  her  equipment  is  all 
that  it  can  be  made,  as  she  touches  her 
real  work  in  life. 

In  her  anxiety  to  reach  the  point  of 
equipment  for  life-work,  a  Girl  is  quite 
apt  to  overstudy,  and  to  do  that  is 
to  study  unwisely.  Wise  study  gives 
proper  heed  to  the  limitations  which 
are  termed  mental  digestion  and  assimi- 
lation. You  should  have  a  care  that 
the  brain  of  your  Girl  is  neither  over- 
loaded nor  made  to  go  too  fast.  She 
must  be  taught  to  give  it  both  time  and 
freedom  not  only  to  select  what  is  best, 
but  to  digest  that  which  is  best.  She 
should  be  taught  that,  at  the  first  feel- 
ing of  real  fatigue  or  genuine  weariness 
from  study,  she  must  quit  it,  and  use  the 


76       BUILDING     YOUR     GIRL 

brain  in  some  sort  of  play.  You  must 
not  let  her  ambition  for  study  drive  her 
bodily  and  mental  powers  beyond  the 
safety  line.  Nature  draws  the  line,  and 
puts  a  sentinel  there  —  fatigue. 

So  to  build  your  Girl  that  she  shall 
possess,  and  in  her  life  manifest,  the 
traits  and  elements  of  true  womanli- 
ness, is  the  aim  and  end  of  your  privi- 
lege. So  to  build  her  that  her  passions 
shall  be  under  the  control  of  a  strong 
will,  that  will  being  the  handmaid  of  a 
tender,  sensitive,  ethically  enlightened 
conscience,  is  your  privilege.  She  will 
love  beauty,  beauty  everywhere,  —  in 
nature,  and  human  nature;  love  it  in 
books  and  pictures ;  love  it  in  music  and 
in  art;  love  it  in  imagination  and  in 
reality.  She  will  hate  ugliness  wher- 
ever it  reveals  itself,  and  shrink  from 
vileness  of  whatever  character. 

Her  whole  nature  will  be  in  harmony 
with  that  which  is  good  and  true  and 
enriching.  She  will  respect  others  as 
herself.  She  will  recognize  the  divine 
right  of  difference  in  men  and  women, 


BUILDING    YOUR    GIRL     77 

and  be  tolerant  and  charitable  toward 
them.  She  will  so  cultivate  her  dispo- 
sition that  its  sweetness  will  become  a 
proverb.  She  will  be  as  ready  to  serve 
as  to  be  served.  Ideally  educated,  she 
will  see  and  feel  the  havoc  that  is  made 
along  the  lines  of  human  life  by  poor 
environment,  ignorance,  discourage- 
ment, doubt,  degeneracy,  and  positive 
evil.  But  she  will  not  be  hysterically 
alarmed  about  it,  bewailing  it,  and  idly 
wishing  that  it  were  not  so,  or  saying 
that  these  maladies  of  body  and  soul 
are  inevitable  and  beyond  remedy. 

She  will  believe  that  these  evils  can 
be  eliminated,  not  by  any  crusade  that 
expends  its  force  and  power  in  vituper- 
ative platform  or  pulpit  speeches;  not 
by  statutes  which  seek  to  make  people 
good  by  law;  not  by  sentimentally  dilet- 
tantish and  rose-scented  essays,  tied 
with  blue  ribbons,  and  simperingly  read 
on  platforms;  not  even  by  any  appeal 
to  the  religious  instincts,  but  by  hold- 
ing firmly  to  the  belief,  that  there  is  in 
every  human  being  some  good,  some 


78      BUILDING     YOUR     GIRL 

element  of  right;  that  in  every  man  and 
woman  and  child,  there  is  some  discon- 
tent with  what  is  wrong  and  physically 
as  well  as  morally  degrading;  some 
groping  and  striving  to  realize  some- 
thing better,  something  good.  She  will 
believe  that  this  good  thing  will  be  re- 
sponsive to  the  personal,  individual  in- 
fluence and  touch  of  one  who,  in  the 
spirit  of  charity  and  tolerance  and  con- 
siderateness,  is  a  sympathetic  helper. 
If  the  world  is  to  be  made  clean  and 
wholesome,  it  will  be  by  this  work  on 
the  atoms;  the  individual  entities. 

The  greatest  philanthropist,  the 
greatest  sociologist,  the  greatest  psy- 
chologist, the  most  intellectual  and  the 
most  manly,  as  well  as  the  purest  man 
that  the  annals  of  the  centuries  reveal 
to  us,  worked  personally  upon  the  indi- 
vidual man,  for  his  betterment.  He 
met  the  man's  most  obtrusive  need,  in 
the  spirit  of  sympathetic  helpfulness; 
and  doing  that,  He  found  his  way  into 
the  man's  life,  for  any  greater  influence 
he  might  choose  to  exert.     By  His  own 


BUILDING     YOUR     GIRL     79 

way  of  living,  He  told  others  how  to  live. 
It  was  all  personal  work  with  the  indi- 
vidual. He  was  always  compassionate, 
helpful;  never  patronizing.  The  ideal 
of  the  Master  was  a  better  civilization, 
ethically;  better  environment;  better 
homes  and  home  life;  better  brotherli- 
ness,  hence  a  better  humanity. 

Ideally  educated  and  carefully 
trained,  your  Girl  will  see  all  this,  real- 
ize it.  She  will  not  be  either  appalled 
by  the  vastness  of  these  maladies  afflict- 
ing the  world,  or  discouraged  by  the 
contrast  of  what  there  is  to  be  done  and 
the  minuteness  of  individual  effort.  In 
the  spirit  of  true  womanliness  she  will 
accept  her  share  of  the  world's  work, 
with  a  purpose,  and  a  determination  to 
carry  out  that  purpose. 

It  is  purpose,  and  then  the  suprem- 
acy of  the  will,  the  resolution  to  carry 
out  that  purpose,  that  gives  a  woman 
much  of  what  we  call  womanliness. 
Once  firmly  settled  in  the  mind  and 
heart  of  your  Girl,  it  will  give  her  the 
power  to  resist  any  outward  changes 


80      BUILDING     YOUR     GIRL 

that  threaten  to  defeat  the  purpose. 
The  purpose,  with  her  determination  to 
live  it  out,  is  the  chief  thing.  Unless 
she  has  this,  once  she  is  in  the  current 
of  society  and  the  world,  all  that  is  posi- 
tive will  be  drawn  out  of  her.  What 
she  has  of  sentiments,  opinions,  preju- 
dices, and  tastes,  will  be  merged  into 
those  about  her.  If  she  has  been  edu- 
cated and  trained  as  you  have  planned, 
she  will  not  be  merged  into  the  current, 
she  will  never  lose  her  individuality,  or 
be  disintegrated.  While  she  will  be 
necessarily  a  part  of  the  social  life  of 
her  place  and  environment,  she  will  still 
have  her  ideal  before  her,  and  live  it, 
and  influence  those  about  her,  rather 
than  be  influenced  by  them.  She  is 
bound  to  impress  her  selfhood  upon 
others.  She  has  more  than  the  power 
to  resist  outward  changes ;  she  can  make 
changes,  she  can  modify  existing  things, 
and  in  this  way  bring  to  her  aid  the  help 
of  those  who,  before  they  felt  her  power 
and  influence,  were  wholly  indifferent 
toward  the  work  or  service  in  which  she 


BUILDING     YOUR     GIRL     81 

is  engaged.  She  may  do  this  partly  by 
her  sweetness  of  disposition,  her  earn- 
estness, her  affectionateness,  her  mod- 
esty and  conscientiousness,  her  quick 
apprehension,  and  her  briUiant  intui- 
tion,— her  pecuhar  gifts;  but  most  of 
it  will  come  from  her  self-  determining 
power.  Once  the  purpose  is  fixed,  it 
can  do  almost  anjrthing  within  the  pos- 
sibilities of  achievement.  No  accom- 
plishments, talents,  opportunities,  or 
circumstances  will  take  its  place. 
There  must  be  the  strength  of  mind  to 
formulate  the  purpose,  and  to  carry  it 
on  to  the  end,  if  any  worthy  work  is  to 
be  done.  The  real  difference  between 
the  feeble  and  the  strong,  the  great  and 
those  who  are  insignificant  in  the  world, 
is  this  invincible  determination  to  carry 
out  the  purpose,  and  live  up  to  the  ideal 
that  lies  behind  it.  It  is  the  irresolute, 
vacillating,  and  yielding  Girl  who  gives 
up  a  noble  contest,  and  sinks  into  pretty 
and  complacent  idleness,  acquiring  the 
character  of  a  young  lady  of  desultory 
habits.     She  soon  becomes  bigoted,  in- 


82      BUILDING     YOUR     GIRL 

tolerant,  and  superficial.  She  becomes 
run  down,  not  only  intellectually,  but 
physically.  There  is  no  such  thing  as 
perfectly  idle  health,  and  the  sooner  a 
Girl  learns  that  truth,  the  better.  Lives 
which  have  no  aim  beyond  the  amuse- 
ment of  the  hour,  are  inevitably,  after 
the  first  few  years  of  youth,  valetudi- 
narian lives.  An  idle  dawdler  occupies 
herself  with  her  own  sensations,  and 
soon  becomes  a  tippler  of  medicines, 
generally  of  the  quack  sort,  fixing  her 
thoughts  on  one  organ  or  another,  until 
she  brings  disease  into  the  soundest  part 
of  her  body,  and  this  because  she  is  a 
mere  dawdler.  There  must  be  work, 
there  must  be  purpose,  an  ideal  in  life, 
if  a  girl  is  to  be  a  healthful  being.  It 
is  easy  enough  for  the  idle,  dawdling 
young  woman  to  get  into  a  condition 
where,  dogged  by  ennui,  she  adopts 
forms  of  excitement  that  utterly  de- 
stroy, or  at  least  obscure,  the  finer  and 
higher  impulses  of  life.  It  is  a  difiicult 
thing  for  her  to  recover  from  it.  No 
young  girl  can  afford  to  give  even  the 


BUILDING     YOUR     GIRL      83 

slightest  hospitality  of  thought  to  such 
a  future  as  that.  It  is  a  pitiful  artifi- 
ciality, and  if  persisted  in,  leads  to 
moral  bankruptcy. 

The  true,  strong  woman  will  be  not 
only  a  resolute  woman,  but  one  with 
her  resoluteness  and  determination  set 
to  an  aim  in  life,  an  aim  worthy  of  all 
that  is  deepest  and  best  in  her  nature, 
and  which  she  will  work  out,  with  all  a 
girl's  fresh  enthusiasm,  and  with  the 
matured  power  of  a  woman.  She  will 
not  drift  into  true  womanliness.  No 
one  ever  did.  Life  is  an  earnest  thing. 
This  you  should  get  safely  lodged  in 
the  mind  and  heart  of  your  Girl  in  her 
building.  Teach  her  that  she  will  miss 
all  its  excellence,  as  well  as  its  reward, 
unless  she  meets  life  with  this  concep- 
tion of  what  she  ought  to  be  and  do,  as 
an  educated  and  cultured  Girl. 

As  the  average  Girl  of  the  average 
American  home,  she  will  be  quite  free 
from  care ;  the  future  of  one  of  the  bread- 
winners. This  will  be  a  great  gain. 
While  it  will  leave  her  freedom,  it  will 


84     BUILDING     YOUR     GIRL 

increase  her  responsibility  for  her  share 
of  the  world's  work,  since  it  is  upon  this 
class  of  Girls  and  women,  commanding 
their  own  time  and  means,  that  the 
great  bulk  of  this  work  must  fall.  If 
it  is  to  be  done,  they  must  do  it. 

In  the  face  of  what  is  to  be  done, 
teach  your  Girl  that  her  life  must  be 
one  of  ministry,  service,  helpfulness, 
doing  good  to  all  she  can  reach;  not 
giving  money,  but  giving  self,  in  a  sym- 
pathetic way.  Out  of  her  culture  she 
must  show  the  way  to  make  life  easier, 
less  hard,  less  harsh.  Not  only  must 
she  make  some  organized  effort,  but 
come  into  personal  contact  with  those 
who  need  help  and  sympathy,  and  give 
some  of  her  own  hopeful,  vibrant  spirit, 
to  the  spirit  that  is  breaking  through 
disheartenment.  The  sweetest  expe- 
riences of  her  life  will  come  to  her  in 
this  way — this  individual  service.  She 
can  in  this  way  make  her  years  golden, 
radiant  with  blessings  to  others,  and 
honor  and  sweetness  for  herself.  The 
true  aim  of  the  culture  of  your  Girl,  if 


BUILDING     YOUR     GIRL     85 

you  have  builded  aright,  is  not  only  to 
fit  her  for  her  place  in  society,  but  for  a 
broad,  helpful,  unselfish  life. 

Your  Girl  must  have  her  share  in  the 
social  life  of  her  place.  It  is  her  right. 
A  part  of  her  education  and  training 
has  been  carried  out  with  this  in  view. 
It  must  not  be  denied  her.  She  is  not 
to  deny  it  to  herself.  It  is  a  part  of 
her  true  womanliness.  She  must  have 
social  companionships,  literary  employ- 
ments, and  her  pleasures ;  she  must  have 
them  to  keep  her  health;  to  keep  her 
own  spirit  bright  and  buoyant.  But 
this  must  not  be  forgotten :  that  her  pur- 
pose of  living  a  useful,  helpful  life  shall 
govern  her  in  her  distribution  of  time 
for  these  companionships,  readings,  and 
pleasures.  If  sacrifice  must  be  made, 
let  it  be  toward  these  other  things,  not 
toward  her  purpose  to  be  helpful.  Do 
not  sacrifice  sincerity  in  this  purpose 
and  work. 

It  is  neither  a  simple  nor  an  easy 
thing  to  take  up  and  accomplish  this 
work.    Do  not  think  it.    It  will  make 


86     BUILDING     YOUR     GIRL 

a  constant  demand  on  tact,  patience, 
forbearance,  the  power  to  repress  the 
feelings  and  to  curb  the  impulses  to 
open-handed  benevolence;  it  will  de- 
mand a  careful  study  of  conditions  and 
of  the  individual.  There  will  be  some 
weariness  in  it,  some  loss  of  vital  force. 
The  helper  will  be  fretted  by  the  fret- 
fulness  of  the  helped,  depressed  by  their 
depression.  But  to  do  this  service  is 
to  make  life  worth  living. 

It  is  in  fulfilment  of  the  spirit  that 
is  actuating,  not  only  the  great  institu- 
tions where  our  young  women  are  get- 
ting their  ethical  culture,  but  the  spirit 
of  the  world  at  large,  a  world  rejuve- 
nated, made  better,  uplifted  and 
strengthened  by  individual  service. 
The  field  is  not  across  the  seas,  but  in 
the  homes  within  our  reach ;  homes  that 
are  wretched  through  ignorance,  dis- 
couragement, helplessness,  hopeless- 
ness, and  the  customs  and  systems  that 
grind  both  soul  and  body.  Some- 
where, there  is  to  be  a  better  social  and 
economic  condition,  one  that  will  make 


BUILDING    YOUR    GIRL     87 

a  better  manhood  and  womanhood  pos- 
sible, and  increase  the  bulk  of  human 
happinesss.  It  will  be  the  result  of  this 
wide-reaching  ethical  culture,  this  spe- 
cial training  of  our  Girls  and  young 
women  for  a  larger  share  in  the  service 
of  humanity.  With  their  tact,  their 
finer  intuition,  their  deeper  sympathies, 
their  better  qualities  of  persuasion,  they 
can  achieve  larger  and  better  results 
than  men.  Be  grateful  that  you  have 
the  inestimable  privilege  of  building 
one  of  these  helpers,  in  the  person  of 
your  Girl.  It  only  remains  for  you  to 
encourage  her  at  the  outset  by  your 
sympathetic  helpfulness  and  interest, 
manifested  by  genial  companionship, 
tiding  her  over  the  first  difficulties 
which  confront  her. 


VII 

YOUR  GIRL  IN  RELATION  TO 

DOMESTIC  SCIENCE  AND 

CHARM 

IT  ought  to  cause  your  heart  to  throb 
with  pride  to  have  a  Girl  like  yours 
in  your  home;  your  Girl,  physically 
fine,  handsome,  charming,  mentally 
clear,  forceful,  and  unspoiled ;  your  Girl 
who  is  pure  and  wholesome-minded; 
given,  not  to  "isms,"  but  to  straight, 
common-sense  thinking;  without  any  of 
the  sharp  intensities,  but  with  an  honest 
and  sincere  purpose  to  make  the  best 
and  most  of  life.     It  is  a  splendid  thing. 

And,  yet,  there  are  other  things, — 
things  which  cannot  be  separated  from 
her  life,  first  as  a  Girl,  then  as  a  woman, 
—  commoner  things,  yet  important  in 
their  relation.  There  is  domestic  sci- 
ence, for  one. 

No  matter  how  much  wealth,  present 
and  prospective,  a  Girl  may  have,  it  is 
a  great  mistake  that  she  should  come 

88 


BUILDING     YOUR     GIRL      89 

to  the  age  of  young  womanhood  with- 
out any  practical  experience  in  the  do- 
mestic science. that  concerns  itself  with 
household  affairs  from  the  attic  to  the 
dining-room  and  the  kitchen. 

Half  a  dozen  of  the  most  efficient  and 
capable  railway  presidents  in  this  coun- 
try know  the  business  of  railroading 
from  an  experience  which  began  in 
spike-driving  and  included  every  prac- 
tical feature  of  it,  from  that  to  the  pres- 
idency. The  most  efficient  manager  of 
one  of  the  largest  manufacturing  estab- 
lishments in  America  can  go  to  the 
bench  and  do  a  finer  bit  of  work  than 
any  man  in  the  factory. 

The  hospitality  of  the  old  South  has 
been  a  proverb  time  out  of  mind.  We 
still  remember  the  beautifully  arranged 
and  appointed  tables,  in  the  big  houses; 
the  quantity  and  quality  of  the  food, 
and  the  excellence  of  the  cooking. 
Many  of  these  homes  had  "mammy" 
cooks,  whose  fame  was  widely  heralded. 
But  it  was,  and  is  still,  the  pride  of  the 
Southern  Girl,  the  beautiful  and  cul- 


90     BUILDING     YOUR     GIRL 

tured  daughter  of  the  aristocratic  fam- 
ily, not  only,  that  she  could  arrange 
and  appoint  the  table,  but,  in  an  emer- 
gency, take  "mammy's"  place  in  the 
kitchen,  and  from  it  send  dishes  of  food 
that  would  do  credit  to  the  most  famous 
cooks  of  the  countryside.  No  matter 
how  many  acres  stretched  away  from 
the  old  homestead,  no  matter  what  the 
wealth  or  social  position  of  the  family, 
the  daughter  and  heiress  had  her  train- 
ing in  domestic  science,  and  a  practical 
knowledge  of  it.  It  was  considered, 
and  spoken  of,  as  a  fine  accomplish- 
ment. 

The  plea  that  your  Girl  may  never 
have  occasion  to  use  this  knowledge  in 
the  personal,  working  sense,  is  a  lame 
one.  That  she  will  always  have  wealth 
with  which  to  pay  for  domestic  service,  is 
problematical.  Changes  from  aflfluence 
to  poverty  are  common.  Admitting 
that  she  will  never  have  this  experience, 
she  will  have  need  of  the  knowledge  in 
the  management  of  others  in  her  service. 
The  most  helpless  creature  in  the  world 


BUILDING     YOUR     GIRL     91 

is  the  woman  who,  ignorant  of  domestic 
science,  is  at  the  mercy  of  incompetent, 
wasteful,  extravagant,  and  dishonest 
servants. 

The  home,  to  be  the  one  place  in  all 
the  world  where  abide  peace  and  content 
and  rest,  must  be  a  place  of  order,  and 
harmony,  and  cleanliness,  and  hygiene, 
and  comfort,  and  beauty.  This  is 
applied  domestic  economy  or  science,  in 
relation  to  the  general  appointments  of 
the  home.  But  it  must  be  more  widely 
applied.  It  must  include  the  service  of 
the  kitchen — food,  and  its  preparation 
for  the  table. 

Your  Girl  ought  to  know  how  to  cook 
and  prepare  food  properly,  hygienic- 
ally.  In  the  matter  of  health,  longevity, 
and  the  pleasures  of  the  table,  we  are  as 
a  people,  giving  much  and  long-needed 
attention  to  the  question  of  food.  The 
purity  of  food  and  the  potentiality  of 
the  different  kinds  of  food,  in  relation 
to  the  different  employments  of  men 
and  women,  is  receiving  the  attention 
and  care  of  the  best  students  of  hygiene. 


92      BUILDING     YOUR     GIRL 

The  latest  ascertained  facts,  descending 
to  minute  details,  are  placed  within  the 
reach  of  all.  There  is  no  excuse  for 
either  ignorance  or  inefficiency  in  the 
choice  and  preparation  of  food.  Your 
Girl  ought  to  have  this  training.  Social 
environment  may  polish,  and  a  liberal 
education  may  enlarge,  but  neither  can 
save  your  Girl  from  being  an  unhappy, 
discontented  misfit,  if  she  does  not  add  a 
knowledge  of  domestic  science,  and  get 
it  practically  by  some  experience.  It 
is  well,  just  here,  to  be  reminded  that 
education  and  learning  are  different 
things,  yet  often  confused.  Education, 
as  usually  conducted  in  schools,  aims 
to  impart  knowledge;  learning  is  the 
result  of  absorbing,  digesting,  verify- 
ing, and  arranging  that  knowledge. 

There  is  no  conflict  between  educa- 
tion, learning,  and  culture  on  the  one 
hand,  and  fine,  anti-dyspeptic  cooking 
on  the  other.  The  many-sidedness  of 
culture  makes  the  vision  clearer  and 
keener  in  details  and  particulars.  Your 
Girl  may  be  able  to  dig  up  Sanskrit 


BUILDING     YOUR     GIRL     93 

roots,  or  get  the  tangles  out  of  Greek 
verbs,  and  yet  understand  and  enjoy  the 
scraping  of  vegetables,  the  beating  of 
eggs,  the  weighing  of  sugar,  and  the 
browning  of  beans ;  and  she  may  be  able 
to  create  dishes  of  such  daintiness, 
aroma,  and  taste,  that  the  very  thought 
of  her  achievements  in  cookery,  makes 
the  appetite  ravenous  long  before  the 
table  hour.  She  may  have  all  that  in- 
tellectual culture  can  give  her,  and  yet 
not  manifest  banality  in  mixing  the  in- 
gredients that  result  in  angel  cake. 
Learning  does  not  necessarily  disturb 
a  woman  in  womanliness.  Add  good 
cooking  and  a  well-ordered  house  and 
table,  and  she  is  angelic. 

It  is  odd,  to  say  the  least,  that  the 
things  which  seem  most  needful  are 
the  things  most  poorly  done.  That  is 
the  reason,  perhaps,  why  we  are  now 
giving  so  much  attention  to  food  and 
its  preparation.  We  can  spare  nearly 
everything  but  good  food  and  good 
cooks.  We  cry  out  with  Jed  Towle  in 
"Rose  o'  the  River,"  "By  the  great 


94     BUILDING     YOUR     GIRL 

seleckman,  I'd  like  to  hev  a  wife,  two 
daughters,  and  four  sisters,  like  them 
Wileys,  and  jist  set  still  on  the  bank  of 
the  river  and  hev  'em  cook  victuals  for 
me;  I'd  hev  nothin'  to  wish  for  but  a 
mouth  as  big  as  the  Saco's.'* 

No  one  in  the  world  is  so  well 
qualified  and  equipped  to  lift  the  home 
to  the  highest  plane,  as  the  educated, 
cultured  young  Girl  whose  training  and 
education  and  culture  are  reflected  and 
felt  in  parlor,  library,  nursery,  kitchen, 
and  pantry.  This  desirable  result  can 
be  attained  through  her  practical 
knowledge  of  a  domestic  science  of 
which  she  is  justly  proud.  It  makes  a 
home  in  the  truest  sense  of  the  good  old 
Saxon  word — the  vox  humani  of  all 
words — Home. 

Closely  related  to  this  matter  of 
domestic  science,  is  that  of  being  charm* 
ing  amid  it  all.  Charming  as  a  hostess, 
as  a  friend,  and  as  a  companion.  It  in- 
cludes manners,  tactfulness,  the  art  of 
talking  well  and  genially,  the  science  of 
getting  along  agreeably  with  people. 


BUILDING     YOUR     GIRL     95 

To  be  beautiful  is  one  thing;  to  be 
charming  is  quite  another.  "What  a 
delightfully  charming  young  woman 
she  is!"  This  was  said  of  a  young 
woman  of  whose  facial  lines  one  would 
be  compelled  to  use  the  adjective  "very 
plain"  if  one  described  them.  Indeed 
she  would  make  a  splendid  foil  for  a 
beautiful  woman.  And  yet  she  is 
notable  for  great  benevolences,  and  for 
what  we  may  term  Nature's  fine  magic; 
only,  not  like  magic  transferable.  A 
charm  not  of  the  senses  wholly  or 
chiefly,  but  a  thing  of  manner  and  ex- 
pression. And  she  will  hold  her  gift  of 
charming  to  the  last,  though  the  plain- 
ness of  face  may  become  even  plainer, 
as  her  dark  hair  whitens  with  age.  She 
will  be,  as  this  man  says,  delightfully 
charming,  for  a  fine  soul  gives  her  face 
its  life. 

Beauty  is  common  enough;  charm  is 
far  more  rare.  While  beautiful  faces 
have  exerted  an  influence  in  human 
affairs  that  eludes  all  computation,  it  is 
charm  whose  influence  is  strongest  and 


96      BUILDING     YOUR     GIRL 

most  permanent.  The  magic  girdle  of 
Venus  was  her  gift  of  charming.  With 
it,  she  was  supreme;  without  it,  she 
was  merely  a  pretty  woman.  One  of 
America's  gifted  writers  has  said  that 
any  man  of  culture  would  weary  of  the 
most  beautiful  woman  in  the  world, 
sitting  opposite  at  table  for  half  a  year, 
if  physical  beauty  of  face,  cuticle-deep, 
were  all  she  possessed.  He  longs  for 
that  which  is  more  composite  —  charm. 
The  classics  bear  a  lesson  to  young 
women.  Helen  possessed  the  fatal  face ; 
Cleopatra,  the  baleful  gleam  of  eyes. 
Still,  we  owe  the  Iliad  to  the  beauty  of 
the  first,  as  we  owe  the  beautiful  things 
in  literature  to  Petrarch  and  Dante  to 
the  loveliness  of  Laura,  and  the  beauty 
of  Beatrice. 

Beauty  and  charm  have  their  illus- 
trations in  society  of  to-day.  You  see 
the  self-centred  woman  of  beauty,  self- 
ishly eager  to  please,  simply  for  her  own 
ends.  Over  against  her,  the  woman  of 
charm,  less  careful  as  to  complexion, 
toilet,  and  air,  by  nature,  finds  and  uses 


BUILDING     YOUR     GIRL     97 

the  magic  and  virtue  of  good  humored 
and  graceful  things,  and  sets  those 
about  her  playing  in  harmony,  leaving  a 
delightfully  pleasant  impression  with 
them,  as  she  moves  about.  Charm  radi- 
ates from  her,  as  the  glint  from  a  gem. 
It  comes  of  a  kind  of  warmth  and  gen- 
erosity of  soul.  To  it  is  added  a  little 
native  humility,  which  —  not  thinking 
more  of  self  than  one  ought  to  think — 
offers  of  its  best  to  make  the  hour  go 
by  pleasantly  for  others.  She  is  modest 
and  unselfish  in  order  to  be  agreeable. 
That  is  charm;  and  it  stays  long  after 
mere  beauty  has  been  forgotten. 

This  young  woman  is  never  super- 
cilious, automatic,  or  dull.  She  has  no 
selfish  motive  in  being  charming.  She 
has  no  selfish  end  in  view.  She  is  not 
charming  because  she  wants  you  to  do 
something  for  a  friend,  or  because  she 
wants  to  borrow  something,  or  because 
she  wants  to  lure  you  into  her  church, 
or  because  it  is  creditable  to  know  you. 
She  is  simply  charming  because  it  is  in 
her  soul  to  be  charming,  to  move  along 


98     BUILDING    YOUR    GIRL 

through  life  on  the  principle  of  making 
things  pleasant;  she  sees  the  bright, 
optimistic  side  of  things,  and  endeavors 
to  persuade  others  to  gain  her  point  of 
view. 

Because  the  world  is  full  of  the 
maladies  of  body  and  soul,  full  of  pain- 
ful things,  she  rejoices  that  she  can, 
perhaps,  withdraw  the  sting  of  some  of 
it,  and  make  life  more  bright,  and  sunny 
and  thankful.  She  is  charming  in  her 
delicacy  and  consideration  shown  in 
little  things;  never  is  brusque  in  look 
or  manner,  no  matter  who  the  person  in 
contact  may  be.  She  never  fidgets.  If 
she  has  a  funny  tooth,  she  never  calls 
attention  to  it  by  working  playfully  at 
it  with  her  tongue.  She  never  sits  and 
munches  emptiness.  She  is  busy  look- 
ing after  the  comfort  and  pleasure  of 
those  about  her,  and  is  charming  in  all 
things  pertaining  to  that.  She  is 
genuinely  a  woman,  and  genuinely 
womanly  in  her  charm.  Her  charming- 
ness  is  the  instinct  of  a  true  woman's 
sympathy  and  psychological  power.     It 


BUILDING    YOUR     GIRL     99 

is  the  power  to  hold.  It  is  an  inborn 
gift,  or  be  it  the  fruit  of  simple  goodness 
of  heart,  or  be  it  a  cultivated  art,  this 
art  of  pleasing  is  one  of  the  finest 
elements  of  true  womanliness. 

The  rhetoric  of  conversation  is  one  of 
the  essential  elements  of  charm.  It  is 
the  essential  factor  in  entertaining,  to 
use  a  conventional  vogue.  Train  your 
Girl  to  talk  well — to  talk  genially,  with 
propriety  and  good  sense ;  not  to  adopt 
the  stilted  phraseology  of  the  society 
novel,  but  so  to  talk  that  the  listener 
may  be  edified  as  well  as  charmed. 

Scores  of  persons  can  write  an 
eloquent  speech  or  an  admirable  essay, 
but  cannot  talk.  Largely,  it  is  because 
they  have  not  cultivated  the  art  of  talk- 
ing. They  have  the  gift  of  language, 
even  the  artist-faculty  and  craft  of 
speech.  They  know  words,  their  places, 
weight,  and  uses.  They  put  them  into 
writing  rhetorically,  forcefully,  pictur- 
esquely, charmingly;  but  in  conversa- 
tion they  cannot  say  a  thing  worth  the 
explosive  power  of  words  to  say.     In 


100     BUILDING    YOUR    GIRL 

either  business  or  society,  this  lack  of 
abihty  to  talk  lames  them.  It  is  a 
crippling  disability. 

In  your  building,  give  your  Girl  this 
training.  Wherever  she  may  move  in 
society,  there  will  be  a  traffic  in  ideas 
and  views  and  opinions,  some  discussion 
into  which  she  will  be  drawn.  She  will 
be  thrown  into  the  society  of  bright, 
clever  talkers,  people  who  say  something 
besides  the  commonplaces.  To  main- 
tain her  place,  your  Girl  should  cultivate 
and  develop  her  conversational  powers, 
learn  how  to  use  her  voice,  learn  to  talk 
entertainingly.  She  ought  to  study  the 
felicities  of  speech,  the  artist-faculty  of 
it,  and  its  craft;  make  it  genial  and 
pleasant ;  cultivate  it,  until  it  becomes  a 
habit  to  use  accurate  language,  until 
there  is  a  smooth  flow  of  sentences, 
giving  the  full  quality  of  perfectly  pro- 
nounced words.  Your  Girl  cannot 
know  beforehand  what  turn  the  conver- 
sation may  take,  so  there  must  be  a 
general  and  a  wide  cultivation.  Much 
of  this  is  self -culture.     Reading  aloud 


B  u  I L  D I N  G  T:o  o  B,  e!);  j&>;i-i  ,>,oi 

when  alone  is  one  way  to  train  the  voice 
and  make  it  winsome.  Make  a  great 
deal  of  pronunciation.  People  measure 
one  another  by  what  they  hear  in  each 
other's  speech.  We  all  know  the 
measure  when  some  one  talks  of  the 
" hee-ro-ine,"  and  "Lady  Pen-e-lope," 
and  "  eti-quette,"  and  "  a-preciate,"  and 
"  di-plomat."  Dictionaries  and  little 
books  of  words  commonly  mispro- 
nounced are  abundant.  Say  the  word 
a  dozen,  twenty  times,  until  you  are  sure 
of  it  on  your  lips.  The  ability  to  talk 
well  is  a  rare  accomplishment.  To  say 
a  word  in  a  pleasant,  graceful,  accurate 
way,  about  the  latest  item  in  the  news- 
paper, or  the  latest  fact  in  science,  or 
about  the  last  book,  or  even  some 
commoner  topic ;  to  say  it  without  arro- 
gance, to  say  it  with  an  inquiring  tone, 
sends  people  away  with  pleasant 
thoughts.     It  is  genuine  currency. 

Conversation  is  often  spoiled  by  some 
one  asking  a  large  question  that  has 
but  slight  relation  to  what  is  being  dis- 
cussed; another  is  verbose;  another  is 


lOS     BUI  J.  D  I N  G    YOU  R    G  I  R  L 

parenthetical;  another  is  so  self-con- 
tained that  his  talk  is  monologic.  He 
never  builds  conversation  by  adding 
something  to  the  remark  of  another  by 
saying  something  which  the  observations 
of  another  suggests. 

Persuade  your  Girl  to  cultivate  her 
conversational  powers,  since  the  ability 
to  talk  well  adds  greatly  to  her  charm 
and  to  her  influence  with  others.  To  be 
able  to  take  part  in  conversation,  be  it 
light,  merry,  witty  or  serious,  and  yet 
not  go  beyond  the  bounds  of  due  respect 
and  reverence,  as  well  as  considerate 
kindness  and  propriety,  is  a  gift  and 
accomplishment  you  should  covet  for 
your  Girl.  By  cultivation  she  may  be- 
come bright  in  repartee,  swift  in  intel- 
lectual rejoinder  and  terse  in  statement, 
adding  conversational  power  to  her 
other  charming  qualities. 


VIII 
YOUR  GIRL  AND  HER  RELA- 
TION TO  MARRIAGE 

IN  the  building  of  your  Girl,  it  is 
taken  for  granted  that  you  cannot 
say  very  much  to  her  about  her  marriage 
until  she  reaches  the  marriageable  age 
and  has  her  love  affair.  But  as  it  is 
natural  and  instinctive  and  peculiarly 
feminine  that  your  Girl  should  have  her 
thoughts  about  it,  read  about  it,  perhaps 
talk  about  it  to  companions,  it  is  parent- 
ally consistent  that  you  should  be  con- 
cerned enough  to  see  that  her  thinking, 
and  reading,  and  talking  of  it,  shall 
reflect  your  own  views. 

Undoubtedly,  through  her  reading  of 
novelistic  literature,  other  books,  and 
the  newspapers,  your  Girl  will  have  pre- 
sented to  her  mind  many  different  views 
of  marriage  —  a  perfect  maze  of  views 
—  some  of  them  proper,  scores  of  them 
false  and  improper  and  dangerous  in 

103 


104      BUILDING    YOUR    GIRL 

their  influence.  It  is  clearly  unfair,  if 
not  criminally  negligent,  that  your  Girl 
should  be  left  to  make  her  own  unaided 
way  through  this  maze.  That  her  mind 
will  debate  this  question  of  marriage, 
and  her  thoughts  be  colored  by  the  views 
she  has  read,  is  very  certain.  In  her 
own  home  she  may  have  an  illustration 
of  what  true  marriage  means.  If  so, 
she  is  indeed  fortunate.  But  even  in 
that  case,  she  is  clearly  entitled  to,  and 
ought  to  have,  some  such  guidance  as 
you  have  already  given  her  with  re- 
gard to  literature,  and  ethical  matters 
generally. 

No  question  has  been  so  universally 
discussed  as  this  question  of  marriage; 
no  question  about  which  there  has  been 
such  a  diversity  of  views  and  opinions ; 
no  question  over  which  so  much  printer's 
ink  has  been  spread.  And  the  discus- 
sion is  still  going  on.  Certainly  it  would 
be  a  dereliction  on  your  part  not  to  see 
that  your  Girl  has  access  to  such  read- 
ing matter  treating  this  vitally  impor- 
tant subject  as  is  proper,  and  in  accord 
with  your  own  views. 


BUILDING    YOUR    GIRL     105 

Besides,  in  a  casual,  impersonal  way, 
the  question  should  be  talked  about  in 
your  family  circle,  and  proper  views  of 
it  impressed.  It  is  a  false  modesty  that 
will  keep  your  lips  closed,  and  your 
views  and  opinions  unexpressed. 

In  building  this  Girl,  uppermost  in 
your  mind  has  been  the  thought  that  the 
work  which  the  world  is  placing  in  the 
hands  of  the  young  womanhood  of  this 
century  demands  the  broadest  develop- 
ment of  the  intellectual  powers,  and  the 
finest  training  of  the  ethical  nature. 
More  and  more  must  there  come  into 
these  delicate  yet  strong  feminine  hands 
the  creation  and  care  of  a  new  and 
sweeter  and  safer  and  saner  type  of 
home  and  social  life.  Our  civilization 
makes  perpetually  new  and  precious 
demands.  Even  the  so-called  "  society  " 
people  have  become  disgusted  with  the 
emptiness,  and  the  froth,  and  the  sham, 
and  the  pretence  of  the  life  they  lead, 
and  are  yearning,  in  a  human  way,  for 
something  that^is  more  human.  These 
young  Girls  will  count  in  this  work  of 
rehabilitation    and    rejuvenation,    but 


106     BUILDING    YOUR    GIRL 

they  must  be  trained  to  realize  that  the 
best  there  is  to  know  and  do,  is  none  too 
good  to  be  carried  into  the  complex  and 
ever-multiplying  problems.  Marriage 
does  not  end  this  work  for  them.  On 
the  contrary,  marriage  widens  their  field 
of  work. 

With  these  thoughts  before  you,  help 
your  Girl  to  right  conceptions  and  con- 
clusions, in  the  matter  of  marriage. 
You  ought  to  teach  her  to  consider  it 
as  the  most  sacred  relation  that  exists 
between  man  and  woman;  one  of 
the  holiest  of  holy  ties,  not  to  be 
lightly  taken  or  lightly  thrown  away. 
Rightly  considered  and  rightly  entered 
upon,  it  means  a  companionship,  a  help- 
meetness  and  intimate  friendship,  not 
for  a  few  months  or  a  few  years,  but 
for  a  lifetime,  be  it  long  or  brief.  No 
true  marriage  is  a  temporary  arrange- 
ment; indeed,  in  one  aspect  of  it,  we 
may  say  that  it  is  a  long,  gradual,  inter- 
growth.  Where  it  is  begun  in  all  the 
purity,  honesty,  and  sincerity  of  true 
love  and  true  respect,  there  will  be  a 


BUILDING    YOUR    GIRL     107 

gradual  intergrowth,  interweaving  and 
interlacing  of  the  spiritual  natures. 
Sometimes  this  is  visible  in  the  physical. 
Not  seldom  has  it  occurred  that  two 
young  persons,  with  scarcely  any 
physical  resemblance  of  face,  have  be- 
come husband  and  wife,  and,  after 
twenty  or  thirty  years  of  happy  married 
life — loving  each  other,  loving  the  same 
ways  of  life,  thinking  the  same  thoughts, 
and  doing  the  same  things — have  come 
to  have  a  strong  resemblance  in  facial 
lines.  There  is  no  contention  that  this 
visibility  always  follows  in  a  true  mar- 
riage, or  that  it  is  the  only  proof  of  such 
a  marriage ;  but  where  it  does  follow,  it 
may  be  accepted  as  such  proof.  That 
it  does  not  follow  a  loveless  marriage, 
is  clear  enough.  It  is  a  psychological 
truth,  that  we  become  like  the  character 
we  gaze  at  and  study,  first  admiringly, 
then  absorbingly. 

True  marriage  is  the  ideal  partner-  ^ 
ship  of  husband  and  wife,  in  which  each 
helps  the  other  to  all  that  is  highest 
and  finest  and  richest  in  character  and 


108     BUILDING    YOUR    GIRL 

life.  The  husband  is  not  independent 
of  the  wife ;  the  wife  is  not  independent 
of  the  husband.  Neither  has  usurped 
the  place  of  the  other,  nor  striven  for 
precedence.  They  work  together,  and 
are  equally  responsible  in  the  belong- 
ings of  the  home  life,  and  in  the  work 
of  creating  a  sentiment  of  social  whole- 
someness,  sincerity,  and  faithfulness. 
In  this  relation,  it  is  a  more  or  less  per- 
nicious doctrine,  that  the  wife  alone  is 
to  be  charged  and  held  responsible  for 
the  social  part  of  the  life  of  the  two.  It 
would  be  just  as  reasonable  and  logical 
to  say  that  she  is  responsible  for  the 
religious  side  of  the  two  lives. 

Strong  moral  support  is  an  absolute 
essential  in  the  success  of  any  good 
cause.  If,  in  the  spirit  of  true  woman- 
liness, the  wife  is  using  her  intellectual 
and  ethical  powers,  and  the  purifying 
influences  of  the  graces  of  her  character, 
in  social  uplifting  and  betterment,  she 
lias  the  right  to  all  the  moral  support 
her  husband  can  give  her,  in  private  and 
in  public. 


BUILDING    YOUR    GIRL     109 

Notwithstanding  the  surface  indica- 
tions to  the  contrary,  and  the  flippant 
pertness  with  which  a  certain  kind  of 
literature  treats  the  matter  of  love  and 
marriage,  we  are,  as  a  people,  coming 
into  a  better  and  finer  realizing  sense 
of  what  true  marriage  means ;  what  the 
virtues  in  relation  to  it  really  mean. 
There  is  a  finer  moral  note  in  our  dis- 
cussion of  these  virtues.  There  is  a 
disposition  to  make  the  adoption  and 
exercise  of  these  virtues  fashionable. 
We  are  coming  to  see  that  these  virtues 
stand  for  sound  sense,  and  this  is  the 
true  basis  of  ethical  and  sound  taste. 
The  part  taken  by  the  affections  in 
making  human  happiness  has  grown 
enormously  in  the  last  decade,  and  now 
holds  the  chief  place  in  the  whole.  In 
true  marriage,  the  whole  affectional 
nature  must  be  engaged.  The  basis  is 
not  merely  husband  —  wife.  There  is 
little  behind  that,  beyond  the  marriage 
ceremony.  True  marriage  means  the 
founding  of  a  home.  The  foundation 
of  that  home  must  be  true  respect,  true 


no     BUILDING    YOUR    GIRL 

love,  and  common  sense.  Upon  these 
virtues  only,  and  what  grows  out  of 
them,  can  the  home  of  lasting,  enduring 
happiness  be  founded. 

These  are  some  of  the  things  you 
should  endeavor  to  get  well  lodged  in 
the  mind  and  heart  of  your  Girl.  They 
ought  to  be  there  as  a  part  of  her  early 
training.  As  a  being  of  conscience, 
with  the  higher  sensibilities  of  her 
nature  developed  under  your  care  and 
training,  she  should  have  this  cultivation 
in  appreciation  of  what  goes  to  make  a 
true  marriage. 

Ideals  are  the  moving  forces  in  the 
world.  They  are  mind  pictures  of  what 
is  desirable,  of  what  may  be  attained; 
they  are  mind  pictures  of  what  we 
should  like  to  be  or  to  have.  In  spite  ot 
all  obstacles,  in  spite  of  foolish  criticism, 
in  spite  of  luxury,  in  spite  of  false 
standards,  there  has  been  an  advance 
toward  holding  higher  ideals  of  home 
life  and  of  marriage.  The  idea  of  mar- 
riage for  maintenance  (yet  that  must  be 
considered),  or  for  a  social  status  (yet 


BUILDING    YOUR    GIRL     HI 

that,  too,  must  be  considered) ,  is  giving 
way  to  the  higher  ideal,  where  the  union 
is  true,  and  where  it  is  based  on  the 
virtues  that  make  for  a  more  perfect 
harmony. 

('^nd  so  there  is  need  of  teaching  and 
training  in  overcoming  the  common 
habit  of  giving  no  reflection,  or  not 
enough;  the  result  of  which  is  misery, 
the  breaking  up  of  so  many  lives, 
and  the  production  of  so  many  real 
tragedies.  True  love  is  not  only  the 
basis  of  the  home,  but  the  great  factor 
in  the  education  of  the  human  spirit. 
The  twin  spirit  whom  we  choose  as  the 
object  of  our  affection  will  either  mar 
or  make  us  and  the  home ;)  and  the 
choice  should  be  something  more  than  a 
fancy,  a  look,  a  smile,  a  touch,  a 
moment's  talk  in  a  crowded  room,  amid 
the  excitement  of  an  evening's  gayety. 
There  are  safe,  and  there  are  unsafe 
marriages ;  marriages  that  are  sane,  and 
those  that  are  thoughtlessly  and  heed- 
lessly entered  into.  It  is  only  common 
sense,  in  this  relation  that  the  two  per- 


112     BUILDING    YOUR    GIRL 

sons  who  are  most  vitally  concerned 
should  become  intimately  acquainted 
with  each  other,  to  ascertain  the  temper, 
temperament,  disposition,  principles, 
and  habits  of  each  other  —  so  far,  at 
least,  as  these  can  be  ascertained  during 
courtship.  If  there  are  no  false  pre- 
tences on  either  side,  the  man  will  know 
the  woman  thoroughly  enough  to  enable 
him  to  decide  whether  or  not  she  is  the 
woman  with  whom  he  can  live  happily ; 
and  she  will  know  him  thoroughly 
enough  to  enable  her  to  decide  whether 
or  not  he  is  the  man  with  whom  she  can 
live  happily. 

One  of  the  safeguards  is  that  of  being 
honest  and  straightforward  in  the  re- 
vealment  of  qualities,  characteristics, 
tastes,  likes,  and  dislikes,  in  the  days  of 
courtship.  Only  unhappiness  can  come 
of  a  marriage,  where  two  young  persons, 
falling  in  love,  set  themselves  to  sum- 
mary deception  by  putting  on  an 
appearance  which  is  not  true  of  either 
of  them;  or  deliberately  hiding  defects. 
If,  on  the  contrary,  there  has  been  the 


BUILDING    YOUR    GIRL     113 

real  honesty  and  reality  of  a  sincere 
friendship,  a  certain  sweet  and  simple 
and  wholesome  intimacy,  in  which  both 
have  been  frank,  and  candid,  showing 
themselves  as  they  really  are,  then,  if 
marriage  follow,  the  chances  for  happi- 
ness are  among  the  best.  At  least,  the 
opportunities  for  recriminations  have 
passed,  and  those  for  the  self-sacrifice 
and  concession  required  of  love  have 
come.  It  is  well  enough  to  appear  at 
our  best,  at  these  times,  but  our  best  is 
the  good,  true,  honest  average. 

While  a  Girl  may  not  entertain  the 
idea  of  a  marriage  for  maintenance,  the 
question  is  a  matter  for  consideration 
and  honest  dealing.  While  mental  and 
temperamental  considerations  ( which 
are  intricate  and  numberless)  should,  in 
relation  to  marriage,  have  the  serious 
thought  of  the  two  young  persons,  the 
pecuniary  matters  are  not  to  be  either 
overlooked  or  minimized.  Marriage 
has  a  material  and  practical  side,  and 
it  is  the  part  of  wisdom  to  remember 
this,  before  undertaking  it.     There  are 


114     BUILDING    YOUR    GIRL 

people  who  do  not  reflect,  and  who  are 
more  or  less  indifferent  to  responsi- 
bility, who  plunge  heedlessly  into  mar- 
riage, regardless  of  the  future,  or  of  the 
adaptation  of  means  to  ends.  They 
may  not  be  romantic  exactly,  may  not 
believe  in  the  "  love  in  a  cottage  "  theory, 
or  in  that  idiotic  proverb,  "  Two  can  live 
as  cheaply  as  one,"  but  they  are  simply 
heedless  and  constitutionally  hopeful, 
with  no  good  grounds  for  hope.  They 
take  to  the  connubial  field  without 
proper  equipment,  and  are  likely  to  re- 
pent of  it.  The  proper  equipment  in 
the  material  sense,  is  a  fair  and,  as  far 
as  anything  can  be  known,  a  certain  in- 
come. Hundreds  of  causes  may  make 
wreck  and  ruin  of  matrimony,  but  no 
one  cause  is  so  greatly  to  be  dreaded  as 
inadequate  pecuniary  means.  Love  in 
a  cottage  is  a  theory.  Love  in  adversity, 
is,  now  and  then,  a  fact.  Since  they  are 
equal  partners  in  building  their  home 
and  the  life  connected  with  it,  the  wife 
ought  to  know  the  exact  income  and  the 
condition  of  the  husband's  resources. 


BUILDING    YOUR    GIRL     115 

There  should  be  no  deception  about  it, 
either  before  or  after  marriage.  An- 
other source  of  trouble  and  unhappiness 
is  the  doctrine  that  the  wife  should  be, 
where  she  can  be,  pecuniarily  inde- 
pendent of  her  husband.  Fathers  con- 
tribute to  this  by  so  dowering  their 
daughters  on  the  wedding  day,  that  the 
husband  has  no  share  in  the  money.  It 
is  quite  likely  to  be  regarded  by  him 
as  an  evidence  of  distrust  on  the  part 
of  the  wife's  father,  and  to  create  in  her 
the  feeling  that  she  has  an  independence, 
an  existence,  and  an  identity  apart  from 
her  husband. 

A  young  man,  decent  enough  to  be  a 
husband,  with  right  views  of  marriage, 
and  properly  equipped  for  it,  will  feel 
that  his  wife  and  himself  are  partners, 
with  an  equal  and  common  interest  in 
these,  as  in  all  matters  pertaining  to 
their  life  work;  and  that  she  is  entitled 
to  an  equal  share  in  their  surplus  in- 
come, and  that  it  ought  never  to  be 
necessary  for  her  to  ask  it.  No  woman 
wants  to  feel  that  she  is  a  beneficiary. 


116     BUILDING    YOUR    GIRL 

While  the  question  of  maintenance 
may  not  be  the  chief  one  in  view  of  a 
marriage,  common  sense  dictates  that  it 
should  be  considered  as  a  very  impor- 
tant one. 

And  it  should  not  be  forgotten  that 
there  is  a  social  side  to  marriage.  Argue 
as  we  may,  the  fact  remains,  and  will 
always  remain,  that  in  this  country,  as 
in  all  civilized  countries,  there  is  a  class 
social  status,  to  which  people  must  give 
or  at  least  do  give,  attention.  Society 
resents  any  indifference  or  contuma- 
ciousness  toward  it  by  young  people  of 
either  sex.  Society  does  not  either  for- 
give this  breach,  or  pour  oil  on  the  water 
of  the  infelicities  of  these  unaveraged 
marriages.  On  the  contrary,  society 
finds  pleasure  in  adding  fuel.  In  the 
divorce  courts  the  term  most  in  use  is 
"  incompatibility."  The  phrase,  "  so- 
cially ill-assorted,"  would  be  nearer  the 
truth  as  to  the  source  of  the  trouble. 

For  the  average  Girl  of  the  average 
American  family,  the  average  young 
man  of  her  own  social  class  promises  to 


BUILDING    YOUR    GIRL     117 

be  the  sanest  and  safest  choice  for  a 
husband.  This  is  better  than  attempt- 
ing to  find  the  ideal  young  man  in  an 
environment  above  or  below  her  own. 
He  should  not  be  below  the  average  in 
good  looks,  the  average  in  mental  capa- 
bilities, the  average  in  attention  to  dress 
and  manners,  the  average  in  domes- 
ticity, love  of  home  comforts  and 
luxuries,  the  average  in  moral  qualities, 
the  average  in  respect  for  himself  and 
for  his  fellowmen;  above  all,  he  should 
not  be  below  the  average  in  goodness. 
A  marriage  where  these  conditions 
are  honestly  thought  out  and  heeded  is 
more  than  likely  to  bring  happiness  and 
content.  The  relations  between  these 
two  are  of  a  natural  and  comfortable 
equality.  There  is  no  tension  to  keep 
up.  By  reason  of  their  constitution, 
men  and  women  are  unable  to  keep  up 
an  unnatural  tension  in  any  one  direc- 
tion, for  any  length  of  time.  A  young 
girl  who,  with  an  ecstasy  of  passion, 
or  some  sentimental  notion,  marries  a 
young  man  below  her  own  social  status. 


118     BUILDING    YOUR    GIRL 

is  more  than  likely  to  repent  it.  Where 
one  woman  succeeds  in  lifting  this  man 
to  her  level,  ninety  and  nine  fail.  And 
it  is  just  as  true  on  the  other  side.  As 
a  dream,  it  is  fascinating;  as  a  reality, 
it  entails  unhappiness.  Actualities  that 
are  necessary  to  the  girl  of  a  good  social 
class,  and  those  that  are  necessary  for 
the  man  who  is  either  below  or  above 
her  social  class,  dissipate  the  charm. 
The  fact  of  social  inequality  remains  as 
a  friction,  mentally  at  least.  Philoso- 
phers tell  us  that  the  thing  to  do  with 
matrimonial  friction  is  to  transform  it 
into  character,  power.  The  philosophy 
of  transforming  the  friction  that  comes 
of  social  inequality  in  married  life  into 
beauty  and  strength  of  character,  is  one 
thing;  doing  it  is  quite  another  and  a 
difficult  thing.  In  ninety-nine  cases  in 
a  hundred,  it  is  an  impossible  thing. 
Even  in  marriages  of  social  equality, 
and  in  the  matter  of  money,  there  are 
bound  to  be  some  sudden  surprises  of 
unknown  traits  of  character.  There  is 
an  element  of  matrimonial  friction  in 


BUILDING    YOUR    GIRL     119 

these  things.  And  they  will  be  inten- 
sified and  aggravated  if  there  is  the  con- 
sciousness of  social  inequality.  The 
safer,  saner  philosophy  is  to  choose  from 
among  social  equals. 

With  some  show  of  seriousness,  we 
are  told  that  dissimilarity  is  an  advan- 
tage in  marriage.  That  is  a  fallacy, 
and  proven  such  in  ten  thousand  times 
ten  thousand  cases.  If  two  walk  to- 
gether, they  must  be  agreed.  If  there 
is  to  be  happiness,  there  must  be  an 
agreement  in  characteristics  and  tastes. 

Beyond  all  question,  the  marriage  be- 
tween social  and  these  other  averages 
promises  most  for  happiness  and  home. 
The  average  girl,  average  in  personal 
beauty,  love  of  dress,  desire  for  pleas- 
ure, pride  of  home  comforts  and  luxu- 
ries, will,  as  a  wife,  have  an  orderly 
and  well-kept  home,  a  well-appointed 
table,  be  loving  and  tactful  and  cheerful 
in  her  reign  there.  And  the  average 
young  man,  given  such  a  home,  will  find 
rich  content  in  these  domestic  relations. 
Together,  with  social  equality  and  simi- 


120     BUILDING    YOUR    GIRL 

larity  of  taste,  they  will  build  their  home 
safely  and  permanently.  To  her  he  is 
not  the  ideal  young  man,  only  an  aver- 
age man.  There  are  no  false  pretences 
between  them.  She  knows  that  he,  an 
average  man,  has  chosen  her  as  an  aver- 
age young  woman.  He  does  not  call 
her  an  angel,  nor  does  he  forget  that 
she,  like  other  women,  has  her  peculiari- 
ties of  feminine  temperament,  and 
needs,  here  and  there,  touches  of  the 
sentiment  that  was  common  enough 
when  he  was  winning  her.  He  will  be 
the  average  lover  still.  Their  love  will 
be  of  the  average  kind ;  not  the  sort  that 
is  cheapened  and  vulgarized  by  over- 
manifestation.  Hers  the  love  that  finds 
in  the  matchless  words  of  Ruth's  vow, 
the  speech  that  fits  it  best;  his  the  love 
that  regards  her  as  queen-consort,  en- 
titled to  manly  chivalry  and  deferential 
consideration.  She  will  not  look  upon 
marriage  as  a  mere  conventionality,  but 
something  sweeter,  richer,  better  —  a 
home-making,  where  her  husband  shall 
find  comfort,  quiet,  order,  peace,  love. 


BUILDING    YOUR    GIRL     121 

and  inspiration ;  find  her  in  the  practice 
of  her  charming  ways  that  made  her 
such  a  winsome  personality  in  the 
halcyon  days  when  he  came  a-wooing. 
Together  these  two  will  enjoy  and  build 
their  home.  There  will  be  the  average 
gayety,  average  physical  and  mental 
charm.  Together  they  toil,  and  to  both 
their  bread  tastes  sweet.  Out  from  this 
home  will  go  the  influences  that  enrich 
society  and  the  world  of  men  and 
women  and  affairs  about  them.  They 
are  average  people,  the  power  and  hope 
of  the  country. 

There  is  truth  in  the  saying  that  for 
the  man  there  is  a  woman;  and  for  the 
woman  there  is  a  man,  who  will  be  true 
counterparts.  But  it  is  precisely  as 
true,  that  for  every  man  of  a  certain  in- 
tellectual, social,  and  moral  standing, 
there  exists  a  woman  of  that  certain  in- 
tellectual, social,  and  moral  standing. 
Vice  versa  for  the  woman.  Love  there, 
and  marry  there,  if  you  would  invite 
happiness.  Certainly  a  man  with  these 
qualities  discounts  his  judgment  if  he 


122     BUILDING    YOUR    GIRL 

marries  a  woman  incapable  of  sympathy 
with,  or  comprehension  of,  these  quaH- 
ties.  It  is  just  as  true  of  the  woman 
who  commits  the  same  folly. 

Some  will  say  that  true  love  does  not 
consider  ways  and  means;  that  it  does 
not  stop  to  argue;  that  it  finds  in  itself 
its  own  reason,  and  the  assurance  of  the 
future;  that  it  does  not  weigh  this  and 
that;  does  not  care  to  scrutinize  its 
emotions.  It  is  a  great  deal  saner  and 
safer  to  begin  married  life  with  a  simi- 
larity of  characteristics  and  an  accord 
of  tastes,  with  a  fair  social  equality  and 
an  absence  of  all  pretence  and  deception 
as  regards  financial  matters,  than  to 
enter  it  with  faith  in  these  theories,  or 
with  the  belief  that  love  will  adjust  and 
cure  any  evil  that  threatens  from  dis- 
similarities. 


IX 

YOUR  GIRL  AND  A  COL- 

LEGE  CAREER 

A  SSUMING  that  in  building  your 
XjLGirl  you  have  had  before  you  the 
thought  that  she  is  a  creature  of  con- 
science, of  many  and  varied  faculties 
susceptible  of  development;  that  the 
very  best  training  is  her  birthright,  and 
that  she  is  developing  in  an  age  when 
character,  brains,  and  a  deeper,  better 
faith  are  to  accomplish  the  work  of  the 
betterment  of  the  world,  this  question 
of  a  college  career  for  her  is  an  apposite 
one. 

A  while  ago,  it  was  college  for  the 
boys;  practical  knowledge  of  life  for 
the  girls.  But  we  have  come  to  see 
that  in  order  that  the  girls  may  be  fitted 
to  use  wisely  and  well  this  practical 
knowledge  of  life,  they  must  have  the 
highest  possible  development  of  the  in- 
tellectual and  ethical  powers.     In  this 

123 


124     BUILDING    YOUR    GIRL 

way  only  will  they  know  how  to  appro- 
priate, and  how  best  to  apply,  this  prac- 
tical knowledge. 

The  farthest  use  of  education  and 
learning  is  to  apply  it  intelligently  to 
the  commoner  interests  of  life.  The 
learned  ignoramus  is  always  in  evidence. 

If  you  desire  that  your  Girl  shall  have 
her  womanliness  developed,  her  sympa^ 
thetic  nature  enlarged,  and  her  uncon- 
sciousness trained  to  meet  bravely  and 
sweetly  the  duties  of  a  life  which  she  is 
content  shall  be  one  of  reasonable  service 
in  her  place  in  life,  then  a  college  career 
should  be  considered  as  one  of  the 
essentials  in  her  building.  For  this 
Girl,  nothing  can  be  substituted  for  the 
intellectual  and  ethical  training  and 
discipline  of  the  college.  As  the  best, 
this  is  her  rightful  heritage.  All  true 
culture  must  have  an  intellectual  and 
ethical  basis,  not  that  which  becomes 
absorbed  by  a  single  study;  for  our 
moral  and  social,  as  well  as  our  political 
questions,  demand  a  broad  and  broaden- 
ing view. 


BUILDING    YOUR    GIRL     125 

Every  young  woman,  as  well  as  every 
young  man,  ought  to  be  so  educated  and 
trained,  that  she  will  be  able  to  add 
something  of  good  to  the  bulk  of  work 
that  is  being  done  along  social  and 
ethical  lines.  She  will  get  this  equip- 
ment in  the  study  of  the  ancient  and 
modern  languages,  economics,  history, 
logic,  ethics,  and  the  humanities  gener- 
ally. In  our  best  modern  institutions, 
she  will  get  the  needed  teaching  in  the 
physical  sciences,  and  practical  training 
in  sociological  affairs.  This  Girl  of 
yours  has  an  end  in  view;  the  college  is 
in  sympathy  with  it,  and  the  training  is 
toward  it.  This  knowledge  of  history, 
literature,  and  economics,  is  valuable, 
not  more  for  the  drill  there  is  in  the 
study,  than  for  the  fact  that  her  mind 
is  stored  with  the  greatest  of  treasures. 
The  things  that  discipline  her,  stay  with 
her,  and  are  a  continual  inspiration. 
Your  Girl  may  forget  her  Greek,  but 
she  will  never  forget  the  spirit  of  the 
Greek  civilization,  or  the  beauty  of  that 
literature. 


126     BUILDING    YOUR    GIRL 

Education  is  not  merely  the  impart- 
ing of  knowledge,  but  the  formation  of 
character  through  knowledge,  as  its  aid 
in  the  development  of  the  whole  nature 
of  the  pupil.  The  wider  the  scope  of 
education,  the  better  the  equipment  for 
work  in  the  world.  At  college,  your 
Girl  is  taught  how  to  concentrate,  how 
to  think  hard  and  straight,  to  think  per- 
sistently, and,  of  course,  to  think  of 
something  worth  while. 

This  intellectual  development  and 
this  intellectual  discipline  are  not  only 
just  as  good  for  a  girl  as  for  a  boy,  but, 
in  view  of  the  work  that  is  to  be  done 
in  the  world,  really  more  necessary  for 
her  than  for  him.  She  will  have  just 
as  much  use  for  the  power  of  observa- 
tion, the  faculty  of  reflection,  the 
science  of  relations,  a  clear  vision, 
mental  steadiness,  and  sobriety  of  judg- 
ment as  the  boy.  At  college  your  Girl 
will  get  what  we  may  call  the  habit  of 
knowing.  That  which  both  the  boy  and 
the  girl  can  and  do  acquire,  is  good  to 
have.     The  college  is  not  good  for  a 


BUILDING    YOUR    GIRL     127 

boy  because  he  is  a  boy,  or  for  a  girl 
because  she  is  a  girl,  but  in  the  way  of 
intellectual  and  ethical  training  and 
stimulant,  it  is  good  for  the  human 
mind.  That  the  college  life  for  your 
Girl  diminishes  the  distance  that  has 
heretofore  widened  between  her  and  her 
brother  is  a  good  thing  for  both  of  them, 
and  for  the  race.  It  leads  him  to  drop 
his  lordly  and  superior  ways,  and  she 
recovers  from  her  adoring  ignorance. 
It  puts  them  on  an  intellectual  equality 
and  good  comradeship. 

What  is  good  for  one  brain  is  good  for 
another,  even  if  it  is  the  female  brain. 
Science,  common  sense,  and  other  things 
have  exploded  the  idea  that  the  weight 
of  the  brain  in  woman  established  her 
inferiority.  It  is  admitted  that  the 
intuition  of  a  woman  is  better  than  a 
man's  judgment;  that  she  displays 
superior  quickness  and  more  certainty 
and  directness  of  perception  than  man 
generally.  It  has  been  clearly  demon- 
strated, by  recent  tests  of  tens  of  thou- 
sands of  boys  and  girls,  made  by  the 


128     BUILDING    YOUR    GIRL 

Bureau  of  Education  that  the  boy  is 
excelled  by  the  girl  and  the  man  by  the 
woman,  in  all  the  higher  qualities.  Girls 
have  a  higher  average  for  brightness  in 
school  than  boys.  Girls  can  absorb  and 
remember  more  than  boys.  The  asser- 
tion that  a  woman  cannot  reason  is  no 
longer  taken  seriously.  When  we  talk 
of  reasoning  in  womankind,  that  old 
book  of  human  documents  is  in  evidence. 
The  first  appearance  of  woman  on  the 
earth  shows  her  arguing  and  reasoning 
as  to  the  suitability  and  advisability  of 
eating  a  certain  fruit.  Very  true,  we 
have  been  told  that  Eve's  conclusions 
were  all  wrong,  but  as  nobody  seems  to 
be  able  to  say  just  what  would  have 
happened,  if  she  had  declined  to  eat  this 
particular  fruit,  it  is  easy  enough  to 
assert  that  Eve  was  in  error.  It  was 
the  first  bit  of  reported  reasoning  on 
earth,  and  by  a  woman;  and  the  man 
accepted  it  as  logical  and  final;  he  en- 
tered no  demur,  and  he  ate  his  share. 
Theologically,  we  should  be  glad  that 
he  had  the  manliness  to  do  it.     Then 


BUILDING    YOUR    GIRL     129 

Rebecca  reasoned.  So  did  Tamar,  and 
Jael,  and  Deborah,  and  Vashti.  It  is 
axiomatic  that  woman  reasons,  and  that 
she  is  preeminently  tactful.  Intuition 
is  her  other  name. 

If  it  be  said  that  one  of  the  functions 
of  your  Girl's  life  is  to  help  her  brother 
or,  later,  her  husband,  to  develop  the 
finest  possible  manhood,  then  certainly 
the  nearer  she  is  intellectually  and  eth- 
ically his  equal;  therefore,  the  more 
intimately  she  is  acquainted  with  the 
processes  of  his  intellectual  and  ethical 
life,  the  better.  Common  knowledge 
makes  common  helpfulness  and  common 
interest  between  the  sexes. 

There  is  no  single  energy  of  the 
human  heart  and  mind,  without  an 
essential  function.  The  faculties  that 
lie  latent  or  dormant  in  the  child  are  the 
ones  essential  to  manhood  and  woman- 
hood. We  have  physical,  intellectual, 
and  moral  possibilities.  These  are 
capable  of  expansion  and  growth;  and 
the  province  of  the  school  and  college 
is  to  see  that  they  do  expand  and  grow, 


130     BUILDING    YOUR    GIRL 

whether  they  are  possessed  by  a  boy 
or  by  his  sister. 

If  this  liberal  education  and  feminine 
culture  are  needed,  primarily,  for  the 
home,  they  certainly  are  needed  for  the 
varied  interests  that  touch  the  general 
welfare.  While  the  men  of  the  present 
day  are  doing  much  to  stay  the  progress 
of  ignorance  and  pauperism,  the  work 
calls  loudly  for  the  women  that  have 
courage,  sincerity  and  the  truth  in 
themselves.  These  services  will  not  be 
done  by  wealth,  nor  by  generosity  and 
benevolence,  but  by  the  personal,  help- 
ful, sympathetic  devotion  of  the  women 
of  the  land  who  have  been  equipped  for 
it  by  ethical  culture,  and  who,  to  do  it, 
will  go  out  of  homes  where  purity  and 
love  and  sincerity  prevail.  The  atmos- 
phere of  these  homes  will  be  carried  into 
homes  where  ignorance  and  wretched- 
ness are  the  burdens  borne.  Your  Girl, 
and  these  other  young  women,  will  not 
merely  talk  of  ideals,  or  speculate  over 
them,  but  live  them  in  daily  life ;  almost 
unconsciously  perhaps.     In  that  way 


BUILDING    YOUR    GIRL     131 

they  will  find  their  reward  in  the  silent 
spread  of  achievement.  Your  Girl's 
college  training  will  give  her  keenness 
of  perception,  the  alertness  of  wit,  the 
power  of  discrimination,  the  sound 
judgment,  the  practical  common  sense, 
and  the  ability  to  adapt  herself  to  cir- 
cumstances, and  to  work  easily  and 
efficiently. 

Your  Girl  should  have  this  training, 
in  order  that  she  may  make  the  most  and 
best  of  her  life,  and  be  fully  equipped 
to  take  her  rightful  place  in  society,  the 
society  of  the  average  American  Girl 
and  woman.  Whatever  the  prejudiced 
detractors  of  the  society  girls  may  say, 
the  fact  remains,  that  the  young  girls 
in  our  average  modern  society  are  more 
richly  endowed  with  the  intellectualities, 
the  charm,  and  all  the  feminine  virtues 
and  graces,  than  the  girls  and  young 
women  of  any  of  the  preceding  cen- 
turies; just  as  richly  endowed,  just  as 
capable,  on  occasion,  of  feminine  hero- 
isms in  and  out  of  the  home,  as  the 
Priscilla  Mullens  or  the  Mary  Chillions, 


132     BUILDING    YOUR    GIRL 

and  as  much  so  as  if  their  wardrobe  were 
limited  to  homespun.  All  the  substan- 
tial advances  of  our  civilization  have 
been  based  on  the  finesse  of  the  average 
modern  society  girls.  They  are,  to-day, 
doing  the  larger  share  of  the  best  and 
most  helpful  and  elevating  work  of  the 
world.  They  are  creatures  of  solid 
quality  and  of  weight  and  influence.  If 
the  women  of  Puritan  and  Pilgrim  days 
were  the  makers  of  America  in  their 
century,  the  society  girls  of  to-day  are 
just  as  much  the  makers  of  America  in 
this  century.  They  are  the  logical  and 
ethical  descendants  of  these  other  fore- 
mothers.  The  society  girl  is  to  be,  from 
now  on,  a  more  efficient  and  essential 
factor,  not  only  in  the  home,  but  in  the 
uplifting  of  the  world.  The  age  of  this 
society  Girl  is  due;  she  has  come.  She 
is  neither  a  doll  nor  a  butterfly ;  neither 
a  drone  nor  a  parasite;  neither  a  mas- 
querader  nor  a  swaggerer.  She  does 
not  court  publicity  or  strive  after  bold 
effects  in  dress  or  manner.  She  does 
not  spend  her  time  seeking  some  new 


BUILDING    YOUR    GIRL     133 

form  of  pleasure,  with  which  to  cure 
ennui.  She  is  a  well-educated,  well- 
trained,  pure-thoughted  Girl  —  whole- 
some, refined,  delicate,  radiating  an 
atmosphere  of  brightness  and  purity 
and  sympathetic  strength,  and  yet,  a 
society  Girl.  Her  college  career  has 
fitted  and  equipped  her  for  this.  She 
reflects  and  graces  it. 


X 

YOUR  GIRL  ON  THE  THRESH- 
OLD  OF  REAL  LIFE 

GRATEFUL,  and  proud  of  the 
privilege  of  parenthood,  coveting 
its  responsibilities,  using  intelligently, 
tactfully,  and  genially,  all  the  advan- 
tages and  influences  in  your  possession, 
you  have  builded  your  Girl,  until  now, 
she  is  at  the  threshold  of  real  life. 
You  have  abundant  reason  for  self- 
gratulation.  You  have  so  educated, 
trained  and  equipped  her,  that  her  life 
must  be  a  significant  figure,  expressing 
a  genuine  value.  Wherever  she  takes 
her  place,  she  is  fitted  and  qualified  to 
fill  it  and  to  do  her  work  well,  not  only 
for  herself,  but  so  that  it  shall  be  helpful 
to  others.  Hers  will  be  a  true,  strong, 
honorable  womanhood.  Physically, 
mentally,  and  ethically  she  has  been 
educated  and  trained  for  this.  She  be- 
longs to  the  order  of  thinking  woman- 
hood.    She  has  more  than  education, 

134 


BUILDING    YOUR    GIRL     135 

more  than  genius,  more  than  social 
gifts.  In  her  heart  she  has  a  deep  sense 
of  her  obHgation  to  be  of  service  in  the 
world,  where  so  much  of  service  is 
needed.  Out  of  this  there  goes  into  her 
will  a  power  which  will  enable  her  to 
bring  good  resolutions  to  their  birth,  and 
give  to  her  purpose  an  earnestness  and 
sincerity  that  shall  be  free  from  all 
frivolity.  She  will  realize  the  possi- 
bilities of  her  developed  womanhood  and 
womanliness,  and  will  bring  to  the  world 
the  helpfulness  it  so  sorely  needs.  She 
may  feel  assured  that  in  no  place  can 
this  womanliness  be  thrown  away. 
Wherever  it  may  be  manifested  —  in  a 
humble  home  or  in  the  average  home, 
in  elegant  mansion,  in  the  centre  of  a 
happy  domestic  circle,  in  the  lonely 
walks  of  a  solitary  life,  in  the  midst  of  a 
refined  and  cultured  company,  at  the 
bedside  of  the  sick,  or  in  the  hovel  of  the 
poor — humanity  will  be  the  better  for 
her  presence,  the  wiser  for  her  counsel, 
the  stronger  for  her  sympathy.  The 
world  will  be  the  brighter,  the  purer. 


136      BUILDING    YOUR    GIRL 

and  the  better  for  her  passing  through 
it.  If  her  life  is  this,  her  name  will  be 
embalmed  in  sweetest  memories,  her 
image  will  be  enshrined  in  the  heart  with 
the  highest  reverence  and  richest  love. 
Such  are  some  of  the  early  rewards  for  a 
broad,  helpful,  and  unselfish  life. 

Your  Girl  may  feel  assured  that  there 
are  these  and  many  other  rewards.  She 
may  feel  assured  that  so  much  of  her 
time,  and  love,  and  labor,  and  thought 
as  she  coins  into  knowledge,  and  truth, 
and  sympathy,  for  the  good  of  others  — 
even  the  impulse  she  gives  to  a  good 
cause  —  will  never  be  either  wasted  or 
lost. 

Whoever  opens  to  another,  a  clearer 
and  better  view  of  the  beauty  of  moral 
integrity,  whoever  helps  another  to  lift 
his  life  to  a  higher  level  of  thought  and 
feeling,  has  wrought  a  work  that  is 
imperishable. 

There  was  a  time,  and  not  long  ago, 
especially  in  the  matter  of  religion, 
when  the  man  who  had  a  new  idea  of  an 
old  truth  was  a  hated  man.     They  were 


BUILDING    YOUR    GIRL      137 

ready  to  crucify  him.  They  said, 
"Nothing  must  be  changed.  What  is 
new  is  bad;  what  is  old  is  good."  All 
that  sort  of  thing  is  past.  Nowadays, 
scientists,  philosophers,  artists,  poets, 
investigators,  discoverers,  inventors  — 
all  teachers  of  ethical  truth  —  become 
immortal.  They  have  not  only  in- 
creased the  volume  of  life,  but  given  us 
a  better  kind  of  life.  If  we  bring  truth 
to  any  heart,  or  a  better  understanding 
of  the  world,  our  lives  become  an  essen- 
tial and  a  permanent  force  in  the  world. 
If  we  can,  with  a  book,  or  a  poem, 
or  a  play,  or  by  personal  work,  put  into 
life  a  helpful  sympathy  for  others,  we 
make  life  permanently  useful.  There 
are  poems  that  become  hymns  in  deso- 
late homes;  giving  songs  in  the  night. 
There  are  thoughts  put  into  literature, 
which  give  a  new  and  beneficent  inter- 
pretation to  pain  and  loss,  to  those  who 
suffer,  and  the  writer  receives  their 
gratitude  and  benediction.  There  are 
deeds  of  kindliness  which  star  into  holy 
beauty    the     darkest    night.       Every 


138      BUILDING    YOUR    GIRL 

worthy  life  is  a  spring,  the  flowings  of 
which  are  refreshments  and  benedic- 
tions to  the  world  of  humanity.  Selfish 
lives  are  the  Dead  Seas  of  humanity: 
they  have  no  outlet  of  good  deeds ;  they 
are  fig  trees,  offering  the  hungry 
traveller  nothing  but  leaves. 

A  little  way  back  in  this  book,  there 
is  the  hint  that  your  Girl  will  find  dis- 
appointing things  as  she  takes  up  her 
life  work.  It  would  be  wise  to  point 
out  some  of  the  errors  into  which  so 
many  good  people  —  aggressively  good 
people  —  fall.  One  is,  that  the  whole 
world  can  be  lifted,  the  whole  structure 
and  character  of  society  elevated,  at 
once.  That  is  mere  theory,  and  vision- 
ary. Archimedes  never  found  the 
fulcrum  for  his  lever,  and  nobody  else 
will  ever  find  it.  It  is  the  woman  who 
makes  the  personal  duties  the  chief  busi- 
ness of  life,  who  will  be  modestly,  and 
perhaps  unconsciously,  doing  good,  and 
"  elevating  himianity  "  all  the  while. 

Utopias  are  hardly  among  the  proba- 
bilities.   That  which  follows  disappoint- 


BUILDING    YOUR    GIRL      139 

merit  is  experience.  Experience  is 
what  we  go  through;  it  is  what  goes 
through  us.  The  next  thing  is  wisdom ; 
and  wisdom  ought  to  teach  us  that  what 
we  think  the  world  should  be,  we  must 
make  ourselves.  We  must  try  to  live  up 
to  our  own  ideal.  If  we  find  that  diffi- 
cult, we  are  the  better  prepared  to 
estimate  the  greater  difficulty  of  bring- 
ing others  up  to  our  standard.  We  are 
not  masters  of  the  wills,  or  regulators 
of  the  conduct  of  any  but  ourselves. 
But  unquestionably  personal  influence 
is  a  mighty  factor  for  good;  and  if  we 
live  as  we  should,  we  shall  in  that  way 
persuade  and  induce  others  to  follow. 
In  this  way  we  can  show  that  it  does 
pay  to  live  a  decent,  clean,  wholesome 
life ;  that  virtue  is  its  own  reward. 

We  are  prone  to  consider  character  as 
a  bundle  of  qualities,  varying  in  degrees 
of  good  and  evil,  and  requiring  to  be 
fostered  or  restrained,  as  the  case  may 
be.  In  our  efforts  to  do  this,  whether 
for  ourselves  or  others,  we  forget  that 
there  is  a  fundamental  disposition  lying 


140     BUILDING    YOUR    GIRL 

at  the  root  of  all  these  qualities  influenc- 
ing and  determining  them;  and  that  is 
the  point  of  whatever  work  we  are  to  do 
for  them.  The  word  character ^  in  the 
Greek  signifies  stamp;  and  this  disposi- 
tion within  a  man  sets  its  stamp  upon  all 
his  actions. 

The  reason  why  so  much  of  what  we 
call  reformation  work  fails  utterly  is, 
that  we  direct  our  attention  to  the  con- 
duct, instead  of  trying  to  strengthen 
the  powers.  We  attempt  to  compel  or 
persuade  people  to  adopt  a  certain  line 
of  action,  instead  of  quickening  a  love 
for  it,  by  imparting  a  sense  of  its  beauty 
and  fitness. 

Make  it  plain  to  your  Girl  that  each 
person's  share  of  the  world,  though  it 
may  be  a  small  one,  is  enough  for  his 
work.  Make  it  clear  to  her  that  her 
entrance  did  make  a  difference,  that 
her  presence  was  not  unnoted.  In  her 
place  she  can  sow  the  seeds  of  affection 
and  good-will.  She  can  do  much  to 
make  her  home  attractive.  She  can 
carry  into  other  homes  a  joyous,  buoy- 


BUILDING    YOUR    GIRL 

ant  spirit,  dispelling  ignorance  and  as- 
suaging suffering.  She  will  reap  what 
she  has  sown.  Many  will  rise  up  and 
bless  her;  she  will  have  their  love,  and 
confidence,  and  gratitude,  and  good- 
will. She  will  have  the  peace,  and  con- 
tent, and  happiness  of  those  who  live 
the  larger  life  of  service.  There  are 
two  rocks  on  which  we  may  wreck  our 
lives, — the  rock  of  conceit,  or  egotism, 
and  the  rock  of  self-depreciation,  or 
false  humility.  The  latter  is  quite  as 
perilous  to  our  usefulness,  as  the  for- 
mer. We  must  be  honest  with  our  own 
nature ;  we  must  not  value  ourselves  too 
highly,  nor  place  too  low  an  estimate 
upon  our  capabilities.  If  what  we  do 
in  the  world  is  our  best  work,  if  it  is  sin- 
cere effort,  it  is  enough.  Be  happy  in 
it.  Life  is  life,  and  equally  honorable, 
equally  responsible,  wheresoever  lived. 
No  one  has  a  right  to  live  carelessly  in 
any  life. 


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